On Sunday, we went up to the Quail Botanical Gardens in Encinitas (about a 40 minute drive) to see the rare The Titan Arum, Amorphophallus titanum. This plant has the dubious honor of sporting the largest unbranched inflorescence (flower stem) in the world. Its smell has the even more dubious honor of smelling like rotting flesh. In fact, in its native Indonesia, it is called the bunga bangkai or the "corpse flower." Over the space of a week or so, the flower can grow to a height of about 9 feet. After all of that effort, the flower only stays open for about a day and a half after which it crumples back in upon itself. One can only imagine the tremendous effort the Arum expends to create and support a smelly wonder of a flower like this. After the flower dies, a single leaf arises which grows to a height of about 20ft., eventually storing enough energy to bloom again.
Unfortunately for us, having arrived a measly 7 days after the initial blooming, we found the somewhat underwhelming, shriveled lump on the right rather than the glorious beauty on the left. The smell, however, was still quite rank if a bit less noticeable.
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