The rare blooming of a giant flower, taller than a man, that stinks of carrion, has been drawing thousands of visitors to Basel University’s botanical garden.
This content was published on
1 minute
swissinfo.ch and agencies
The only previous time a titan arum (Amorphophallus titanum) produced a flower in Switzerland was 75 years ago. World-wide, there have only been 134 recorded instances of cultivated plants blooming.
The nearly two-metre tall flower opened on Friday evening. The flower started to poke out of the soil in March, and in the past few days it had been growing at the rate of about six centimetres a day. But before then it had taken 17 years for the corm to grow to 20kg and to reach the blossoming stage. It will start wilting on Saturday evening or Sunday. Its mother plant last bloomed in the Frankfurt Palm Garden in 1992.
The gardens expect some 10,000 people to come to see it and are remaining open for at least 24 hours while the flower lasts. The event is also being filmed on webcam. On Friday, the webcam site was viewed more than 100,000 times.
The titan arum’s distinctive smell, appreciated by the insects that pollinate it, has given it the colloquial name of “corpse flower”.
Native to Sumatra’s tropical rain forest, it requires a humid climate to grow and even in the wild blossoms very infrequently.
Huge though Basel’s flower is, the tallest specimen ever recorded was about three metres high.
If you want to start a conversation about a topic raised in this article or want to report factual errors, email us at english@swissinfo.ch.
Read more
More
Photographer reveals the secret life of pollen
This content was published on
Delving into the miniscule world of pollen, the “micronaut” shows that the grains are in fact very varied and very beautiful – and that they go to great lengths to have sex. His work recently featured in National Geographic, which devoted a whole article to the topic of pollen, along with an Oeggerli gallery. He…
This content was published on
The international study, involving Zurich University’s Florian Schiestl, is published in the January edition of The American Naturalist. “Orchids are special. They are maybe the world champions in having evolved diversity of pollination systems,” Schiestl, a professor at the university’s Institute of Systematic Botany, told swissinfo.ch. Most flowering plants reward pollinators, such as bees, wasps…
This content was published on
Furthermore, the salt used to de-ice roads in winter has had a severe impact on habitat, driving out such common wayside plants as daisies and dandelions, and enabling salt-tolerant plants to take root. As a result, some plants which used to be found only on the coast are moving inland. Botanist Raymond Delarze, who runs…
This content was published on
Martin Nil had an eye for flowers. A village pastor in the Bernese Oberland between 1912 and 1949, he was also a keen photographer. He went high and low to capture photographs of alpine flora and the mountainous landscape, and then meticulously coloured the images by hand. His grandson looks back at some of his…
You can find an overview of ongoing debates with our journalists here . Please join us!
If you want to start a conversation about a topic raised in this article or want to report factual errors, email us at english@swissinfo.ch.