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Science

World's Largest Flower 48

Posted by michael from the garnish-with-baby's-breath dept.
An anonymous reader writes "The Titan Arum (Amorphophallus titanum) produces the world's largest flower and is currently in bud at the University Botanic Gardens Bonn (Germany). As of Thursday, 12 a.m. it is set to break the old world record established in 1932. The old record was 267 cm while the new bud is now 273 cm and still growing."
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World's Largest Flower More

World's Largest Flower

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  • What's the flower that has that really hudge bud, only opens like every few years, and smells of rotted flesh? If memory serves me it is from the amazon rain forest. Anyone remember the name of that thing?
    • You would be correct.. smeels strongly of rotting fish. Lovely.
    • "The Titan Arum flowered the last time at Bonn in Juli 2000. The flower with the shape of a fountain has had a diameter of 1,5 m and reached almost 2,60 m in height. It was the third largest flower of the Titan Arum in cultivation ever. Within 3 days the plant - strongly smelling of decaying fish - attracted some 15.000 visitors to the Botanic Garden of the Poppelsdorf Castle."

      I believe it's called the Titan Arum.
      My trick? Reading.
      • Thanks for the support, it's always good to know kind people are on the 'net to help. I found the thing I was looking for referred to more directly as The Corpse Flower [whyfiles.org] and that was the name I most identify with it. Never heard of something with the specific "decaying fish" armoa, just the non-descript "flesh." Also of note a Corpse Flower is in bloom in California I beleive, and that made local news.

        Thanks for your help.

    • What's the flower that has that really hudge bud, only opens like every few years, and smells of rotted flesh? If memory serves me it is from the amazon rain forest. Anyone remember the name of that thing?

      Rafelasia a parasitic plant from the South East Asian rainforests (the Malay side of the Wallace line). There is some excellent footage of it on David Attenborough's Private lives of plants. Definately bigger (wider) than the Amorphophallus titanum but not as tall.

      • Rafelasia a parasitic plant from the South East Asian rainforests (the Malay side of the Wallace line). There is some excellent footage of it on David Attenborough's Private lives of plants. Definately bigger (wider) than the Amorphophallus titanum but not as tall.

        Rafflesia arnoldii grows to about a 1m diameter. The Titan Arum in bloom in Bonn has a diameter of 1.5m. So the Titan Arum is both taller and wider than Rafflesia. However the flower of the Titan Arum is not really a flower, it is infact an "i

  • Name it (Score:2, Funny)

    by lechuck80 ( 672996 )
    They named it Audry II, and that kid is standing way too close in a few of those pictures.

  • Slashdot fun (Score:5, Funny)

    by aridhol ( 112307 ) <ka_lac@hotmail.com> on Thursday May 22, 2003 @11:03AM (#6015151) Homepage Journal
    Look - they have a graph of hits over time at the bottom. Let's see how well that thing scales ;)

  • Lawn (Score:2, Informative)

    by Samus ( 1382 )
    I don't think this is the type of flower your neighbors would like you having in the front yard. When its sprouting it has somewhat of a phallic nature to it and then it smells like rotting fish. I've heard of other flowers that have horrible odors and people sending the plants to "friends" as practical jokes. Can anyone name a few of these nasties?
    • Rafflesias, all of them. Smell of various decaying flash, look like normal cactii. Originally from South Africa

  • They have a live webcam (Score:4, Informative)

    by DeadSea ( 69598 ) * on Thursday May 22, 2003 @11:18AM (#6015262) Homepage Journal

    Live Webcam [uni-bonn.de] of the flower. As I post there are a bunch of people standing around looking at the flower and the flower dwarfs all of them. Quite impressive.
  • This monstrusosity smells 'like decaying fish,' people actually paying to see the plant live, beware! Much safer for yer nostrils to see it on the web.

  • The Big Stinky (Score:3, Funny)

    by moonboy ( 2512 ) on Thursday May 22, 2003 @11:34AM (#6015394)
    I saw something about this the other day. I think the workers there refer to it as the "The Big Stink" or something like that. Supposedly it periodically puts off a horrendous odor. Probably a SBD (Silent But Deadly).
  • Duuude!

    Excellent!!

    World's biggest flower means the world's biggest Bud! Fire one up and let's PARTY!

    (Wouldn't my mom be proud of me right now? "There's my baby - posting to Slashdot.")
    • It's nice to know, even in our modern times, that someone is still out there trying to eat/drink/smoke anything. Humanity couldn't have gotten this far without willing testers like you dying off to prove things like we can't smoke kerosine, but we can salt meat to make it last longer.
  • Wonder why it's smelling like rotten fish... maybe it's not fish that is rotten... Have you guys seen "Little Shop of Horror"? ;)

  • way cool (Score:4, Informative)

    by RevAaron ( 125240 ) <revaaron AT hotmail DOT com> on Thursday May 22, 2003 @12:04PM (#6015665) Homepage
    I was in Germany on an exchange trip 6 or so years ago, and my host family had taken me to a botanic garden where they had a speciment of this species. I was totally bummed- I had finished flowering before I saw it, and was all wilted and dead-looking.

    Even dead it was surreal, the sheer size of it. The size of the pot, the size of the dead leaves... it was rad.

    Ok, I admit it, I'm a plant nerd. I've always been interested in plants, be it plant population ecology or ethnobotany or the care and feeding of entheogenic plants. Now a days I'm an aspiring computational ecologist. So yeah, I'm a sucker for this stuff.
    • I was totally bummed- I had finished flowering before I saw it, and was all wilted and dead-looking.

      If you had just finished flowering and were all wilted and dead-looking, no wonder you were bummed. What sort of one-night stand leads to a child who flowers?

      Seriously though, that would be cool to see. Good luck with that computational ecology stuff.

  • Amorphophallus Titanum (Score:5, Funny)

    by lindsayt ( 210755 ) on Thursday May 22, 2003 @12:11PM (#6015743)
    This thing seems to have been named quite aptly.

    Going back to our Latin roots:

    • Amorpho = amorphous = Lacking definite form or shapeless
    • phallus = phallus = male penis or female clitoris, or a representation of the penis illustrating generative power
    • Titanum = titan = of prodigious size, strength or achievement

    So this flower is "scientifically" defined as an unusually huge and shapeless representation of the male penis. This is why men shouldn't name flowers...

    Of course to be fair, that gigantic flower is after all the plant's sex organ, so perhaps the description is apt...

    Definitions courtesy of Dictionary.com [dictionary.com]
  • If that doesn't get you into your prom dates panties nothing will.
  • DON'T TOUCH IT! HACK THEM ALL INTO PIECES!

    The plants are from OUTERSPACE!!!!!

    It's a conspiracy! The "people" involved make you believe that the pod is really a big flower, but really it's a HUMAN BODY REPLICATOR! It'll suck the LIFE out of you WHILE YOU SLEEP! The site even shows how the pods are human size! That child was just hatched!

    [shouting] That doll is *Evil*, I tells ya. Evil! Eeeeeeviillll!!! [snpp.com]
  • This will doubtlessly make Jim Woodring [jimwoodring.com] happy.

  • The smell (Score:2, Informative)

    by netkgb ( 200102 )
    It smells like decayed fish because, in the wild, the smell attracts every bug in a 5 mile radius to come and pollinate it.
  • http://www.botanik.uni-bonn.de/botgart/amorphotita kl.jpg I would hate to see what insect pollonates it.

  • What kind of nutrients (Score:4, Interesting)

    by Muhammar ( 659468 ) on Thursday May 22, 2003 @02:37PM (#6017201)
    I cannot imagine what kind of nutrients in soil can support such a fast-growing monstrosity. Do they have to feed it live sheep?

  • Suddenly.... (susan) (Score:3, Funny)

    by KurdtX ( 207196 ) on Thursday May 22, 2003 @05:01PM (#6018611)

    All of a sudden Little Shop of Horrors [imdb.com] seems a lot more scary - it seems a lot more possible now. Just need to hide a wireless speaker in there to really scare people.
  • If I calculated correctly, looks like this thing sustains a growth rate of more than 5.6cm/day for for almost two straight weeks, and ends up just slightly taller than Robert Wadlow [altonweb.com], the tallest man in history. Yowsers.
  • but the webcam doesn't work at night.
  • just genetically engineer one that smells like a rose, and you could make a fortune.
    Or make it smell like fruit loops.

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