[Kabar-indonesia] Giant Sumatran plant a stinker for New Yorkers

[Joyo at aol.com]

Associated Press 
August 12, 2006

Giant plant a stinker for New Yorkers

New Yorkers can breathe easy again: the "corpse flower" has passed its smelly 
peak.

But the plant dubbed "Baby" may soon have some of its own.

It was the first time in 67 years that the odoriferous Amorphophallus titanum 
bloomed in New York City. The plant began blooming Thursday afternoon at the 
Brooklyn Botanic Garden. By that evening, it was giving off its signature 
pungent odour, a smell akin to rotten eggs or garbage left out overnight, that 
emanated well into Friday morning. But by Friday afternoon, visitors had to get 
right next to the unusual flower to take the dreadful whiff.

"It's amazing to see," Roberto Martinez, 44, a college adviser from Brooklyn, 
said of the flower, which grew from 35 inches (90 centimeters) tall 12 days 
ago to 66 inches (169 centimeters) on Friday. It gained 2 inches (6.35 
centimeters) between Thursday and Friday alone.

"Good thing it only lasts a day," Martinez said of the intense odour..

About 50 people who stopped by Friday witnessed the next stage of the 
flower's life process: its pollination.

Using pollen donated by Virginia Tech University - which has its own 
Amorphophallus titanum - Alessandro Chiari, the BBG's plant propagator, used camel 
hair brushes to apply pollen to the female part of the plant. If it takes, it 
will sprout small red fruits in the next few weeks from which the museum will 
take seeds and grow more flowers.

"It's really about sex," observed Leeann Lavin, the museum's chief 
spokeswoman.

The plant's male section will have pollen available for the taking by Sunday, 
Chiari said. Workers plan to store that pollen and send it to other groups 
who have similar plants so that they can keep the breeding going.

The exotic flower, native only to Sumatra and named "Baby" by handlers, burst 
into bloom after 10 years of nurturing from seeds. It can grow as much as 
seven inches (18 centimeters) a day and up to nine feet (2.7 meters) tall.

While obnoxious to humans, its smell is ambrosia to the insects - sweat bees 
and carrion beetles - that pollinate the flower in the wild. In captivity, the 
plant needs to be pollinated artificially.

The plant is expected to start wilting and closing in sometime Sunday, Chiari 
said. Its lime-coloured, central protuberance will likely collapse in the 
next few days. But it won't die, Lavin said, and the botanic gardens will keep it.

Thousands have stopped by to witness the plant's rapid growth and smell its 
offensive stink in the last week. But even those who missed the worst spell of 
smell said they were amazed.

"This is something that everyone here is going to remember," said Daniel 
Hetteix, 20, of Brooklyn, who watched from the sidelines.

"I think it's beautiful," said Wanda Munoz, 41, of Queens.

The last time one of the plants, formally known as an inflorescence, 
blossomed locally was at the New York Botanical Garden in the Bronx in 1939. It 
actually was the Bronx's "official flower" until then-Borough President Fernando 
Ferrer changed it six years ago to the more mundane day lily.

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Joyo Indonesia News Service
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