Cornell University’s corpse plant bloomed at 4 p.m. Wednesday but in the overnight hours, it unexpectedly started to wither.
At 8:30 Thursday morning, visitors saw the plant’s purple spathe and the tall spadix starting to collapse.
“It’s fading early and we didn’t expect,” said Professor Robert Raguso, whose students have been documenting the plant, known as Wee Stinky, in two hour intervals.
It looked like it had lost water pressure, Raguso said. That was not expected until Friday.
The tall, tropical plant, found in the Sumatran rainforests, is named for the noxious odor it emits, described by some as “rotting meat” or “dead fish” when it blooms to attract flies and beetles.
The peak of the stink came Wednesday evening as predicted, the first day the plant bloomed. Crowds of people came and socialized while learning about the plant.
“I think it’s terrific, because it brings people together almost like an art installation, ” Raguso said.
The plant uses massive amounts of energy to open its giant spathe, which is a large, leaf-like part, and make seeds. The process can kill the corpse plant.
Since Wee Stinky produced seeds in 2012, it went dormant for a time, and then it grew new leaves and a large spadix, a fleshy spike, which helps disperse the plant’s wretched stench.
The rotting-meat smell during bloom imitates a dead carcass, and that attracts carrion flies and beetles. “Nobody’s done a pollination study in the wild, and we’re not really sure what pollinates it nature — we know what visits it,” Luckow said.
Raguso sampled the plant’s pollen Thursday morning to see if it had matured and was shedding. When ready, it sheds in strings that can be collected to pollinate another plant and make fruits that will grow into new titan arum plants.
“No, it’s not ready, maybe this evening” said Raguto after dipping a paint brush inside the plant.
Cornell kept the pollen from the bloom in 2012.
“We’re doing a time travel experiment to see if it can pollinate itself,” Raguto said.
On Thursday morning the question could not yet be answered. The female flowers were ready, but the males were not. Raguto said that they are trying to answer one of the arcane questions of of botany. “Can you pollinate yourself and do you pollinate yourself?”
The Kenneth Post Lab’s Greenhouse 114 at 512 Tower Road will be open until 9 p.m. Thursday. Visitors should check titanarum.cals.cornell.edu for updated information.
Staff writer Andrew Casler contributed to this report. Follow Simon Wheeler @ijphotos.
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