Farewell to the Titan arum

When I went to visit the arum today, it was gone. In its place was a photocopied announcement:

UPDATE ON THE TITAN ARUM

At 5:15 pm on Friday, July 25, 2003, we bid farewell to the Titan arum. Dr. Dan Nicholson of the Smithsonian Institution's National Museum of Natural History, Department of Botany, dissected the inflorescence (flowering stalk). It will be preserved in the National Herbarium (but not available for public viewing). The plant lives on and will continue to grow at the USBG Production Facility greenhouses. We hope that our plant will bloom again within several years.

We'll miss you, big guy.

[link]

What a difference a day makes. Wednesday turned out to be the high point of the Arum's career. By Thursday it was visibly drooping. Today the deterioration was unmistakable. We shall have to wait another two or three years to see its next attempt at reproduction.

Wednesday evening provided an interesting demonstration of psychology and crowd mismanagement. To accomodate the record interest, the conservatory was staying open an extra two hours, until 7 PM. When closing time came, however, there were still several hundred people in line (including the Mouse and me) who had been waiting in the broiling evening sun for a chance to say farewell to the flower. Something very nearly like a riot ensued, with shouting and ugly jostling around the conservatory windows. I was tempted to tap my Sixties' heritage by starting a chant of:

"What do we want?"
"AMORPHOPHALLUS!"
"When do we want it?"
"NOW!!"

Better judgement prevailed. The crowd was sufficiently incensed that they might have taken it seriously. And there was a lot of plate glass to vent frustrations on. As I remarked to the Mouse, people who work in glass houses shouldn't piss off crowds.

All this over a big stinky flower. And this the nation's capital, next to the nation's Capitol, at a time when passions are raised over war and the economy, security and the eroding rights of the individual. But it was historically appropriate; I see from Kew's site that in 1926 the crowds drawn to the second flowering of the Titan Arum were so large that police had be called in to control them.

[link]

[link]

Currently blooming at Washington's United States Botanical Garden: the Titan arum, Amorphophallus titanum, one of the world's largest and smelliest flowers. Kew's Titan arums have been blooming regularly for the past few years, but this is only the second time ours has bloomed in the ten years we've had it. Other amazing facts about the Titan arum are that it is pollinated by dung beetles (hence the smell), and that it actually gets warm during its brief bloom, reaching human body temperature, before "falling into an exhausted heap".

The bud was about 45 inches tall today. We're expecting it to open tonight or tomorrow.

[link]