Day 160 - See a "Corpse Flower" in Bloom

Date: June 15th, 2010

There are some things that come around over and over again.  If I miss the 5pm showing of Iron Man, I'm not going to flip.  There's a 6pm, a 7pm, an 8pm and, of course, the inevitable DVD/Blu-Ray blitzkrieg that will show up six months from now.  In short, if I want to see it, I'll get to see it.

There are other things that come significantly less frequently.  The last Triple Crown winner was Affirmed in 1978.  The last time Halley's Comet was visible was 1986.  The last time we elected a Catholic President was 1960.  (Guess which one of those I didn't have to look up).

Along the same vein, I recently found out that the incredibly rare, exquisitely beautiful, odoriferously pungent "corpse flower" was in bloom on the campus of Michigan State in East Lansing.  The "corpse flower" only blooms for a couple days and then dies for several years.  The last time the one in East Lansing was in bloom was fifteen years ago.  It was three days into its roughly four day life cycle when I found out about it.  Needless to say, I changed up my plans to see what all the fuss was about.

Its sticking its tongue out at me!

It was absolutely gorgeous.  That shade of purple is one I've never seen before and the flower itself came up to my shoulder, making it the biggest flower I've ever seen in person.  I was also really taken by the fact that so few people in the world get to see this.  The papers in Lansing bragged about getting 500+ visitors.  Out of six billion people, only about 500 got to see this plant in bloom.  And more than that, within 12 hours of me seeing it, it was dead.  Not to bloom again for at least a decade.

Pictured: Diva flower.

By the time I got there, a great deal of the pungency had left the flower, which, quite frankly, I'm totally comfortable with.  See, the reason this delightful flower got nicknamed the "corpse flower" has nothing to do with how it looks.  It got the nickname because it smells like decaying flesh.  The flower pollinates by attracting beetles and other bugs that feed on dead animal flesh.  I had to lean in to within about a foot of that lovely stamen/tongue-like-thing in the middle to get a whiff.  I don't recommend following my lead on that decision.  It was... highly unpleasant.

That being said, just when I thought the absurdity of a flower that only blooms about every thirty years; lives for four days and dies; is four feet tall; and reeks of dying flesh couldn't be topped, I found out something else about it.  Remember how I said that "corpse flower" is a nickname (and how I've been putting it in quotes over and over again... cause I'm all picky like that)?  Well, its real name is Amorphophallus titanum, from the Greek.  For those who don't speak Greek, the Wikipedia breaks it down to its parts.

Amorpho- "misshapen"
-phallus  "penis"
titanum  "giant"

That's right.  I went and saw the giant-misshapen-penis flower that only blooms about every thirty years; lives for four days and dies; is four feet tall; and reeks of dying flesh.  Epic.

Gosh.  I wonder why they named it that.