Visitors to Leiden, Netherlands were holding their nose as a rare rancid-smelling flower – dubbed the ‘penis plant’ for its phallic shape – bloomed for the first time in nearly 25 years at the city’s celebrated botanical gardens.
Amorphophallus is a tropical rainforest native to Indonesia. It is rare in any collection, as it needs such a hot and humid environment.
One of the oldest botanical gardens in Europe, the Hortus Botanicus Leiden, began flowering on October 22nd and continued to bloom through the week.
Roos Kocken, a volunteer gardener, posted a TikTok Friday, joking that the penis plant had shriveled and workers had sliced open the plant so visitors could see inside.
She added, “It’s still beautiful actually.”
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An Amorphophallus decus-silvae, nicknamed the ‘penis plant’ for its phallic shape, started flowering last week at the Hortus botanicus in Leiden, Netherlands, one of the oldest botanical gardens in the world
According to a release from the Hortus Botanical Institute, this is only third time that the species has ever flowered in Europe.
The Leiden Hortus last saw a similar plant in 1997.
Rudmer Postma is a volunteer gardener who has been tending the plant for six years.
The first bud was spotted in September. Within six weeks, it grew to almost two feet tall with a narrow stem of 6 feet, 7 inches.
Apart from its large size and suggestive appearance, the plant is known for its noxious rotting flesh odor that it emits as soon as it begins to bloom.
It was then a waiting game.
Unfortunately, the sign that the flower has begun to blossom is a fetid fragrance that smells very similar to rotting flesh and attracts flies.
Kocken said that the smell wasn’t bad but intensified in the afternoon.
This is the first, feminine phase of the flowering process. It involves the warming up of the spadix (or white penis-like portion of the plant’s bloom head), known as an inflorescence.
The distinct, unpleasant odor is triggered by the warming.
When flies or other pollinators arrive to court, the Amorphophallus shifts into its male phase and produces pollen that coats any insects that land on it.
Visitors to the Hortus botanicus Leiden could climb a ladder to peer inside the flower, which was at the end of a 6 foot, 7 inch stem
The pollen-covered flies then move on to find another flowering plant.
If it’s another Amorphophallus silvae, then the pollen will slough away the bugs and fertilize your plant.
However, the Leiden Hortus only had one ‘penis flower’ so staff collected pollen for two days from the flower to share or store with other institutions.
Garden visitors could look down at the bud from a ladder placed next to the giant plant.
After the penis plant had flowered and released pollen, it was cut open by garden workers. Garden workers opened it so that visitors could see the structures within.
The corms of Amorphophallus plants’ flowers emerge from corms, rounded structures under the soil consisting a swollen base covered with scale leaf.
Susan Pell (deputy executive director, US Botanical Garden in Washington DC) stated that the bloom is a waste of energy. The corm must produce a series or leaves over a period of time in order for it to bloom again. This is to ensure that enough energy is available to the corm.
The Greek words ‘amorphos,’ which means misshapen, and ‘phallos’ (or penis), give rise to the genus Amorphophallus.
It includes approximately 200 tropical plants that are native to Asia, Africa and Australia, as well as Pacific islands.
The Amorphophallus titaniumum, or corpse flower, is closely related to the Amorphophallus-silvae. It has the largest inflorescence among the genus.
Closely related to the Amorphophallus decus-silvae is the Amorphophallus titanum — or ‘giant, misshapen penis’ in ancient Greek — which has the largest inflorescence of the genus.
It also had a rotting smell, which is why it was nicknamed the “corpse flower.”
Leiden Hortus also houses Amorphophallus titanum. It can take up seven years for it to complete its flowering cycle.
When an Amorphophallus titanum opened at Chicago Botanical Gardens in 2015, a horticulturalist described it as smelling ‘like roadkill, a barnyard, a dirty diaper—very strong, a little bit of mothball smell, too,’ Reuters reported.
Amorphophallus gigas, penis flower, and the corpse flower are all natives to Indonesia. Only Amorphophallus silvae is found on Java.
Amorphophallus titanum was listed as endangered by the International Union for Conservation of Nature in 2018. It is believed that there are less than 1000 of these species in the wild due to logging and agricultural destruction.
Botanists are working on a virtual ‘family tree’ for the corpse flower to make sure the small number of viable specimens, most of which are closely related, doesn’t lead to inbreeding.