A smally Mystery: America's pungent corpse flowers are all blooming at once

There have only been 157 recorded blooms ever between 1889 and 2008. But this year in the US alone, at least seven flowers have bloomed.

What is a corpse flower? Amorphophallus titanum (from Ancient Greek amorphos, "without form, misshapen" + phallos, "phallus", and titan, "giant"), known as the titan arum, is a flowering plant with the largest unbranched inflorescence in the world. 

Due to its odor, which is like the smell of a rotting animal, the titan arum is characterized as a carrion flower, and is also known as the corpse flower, or corpse plant. The titan arum, grows in the rainforests of Sumatra, Indonesia and Malaysian Borneo in Sabah and Sarawak. It is listed on the endangered species list as threatened due to deforestation.  

These gigantic flowers bloom about once every six years. So far, seven corpse flowers have bloomed around the US within months of each other The Guardian notes that corpse flowers are expected to bloom soon (or have just started blooming) in New York, Washington, D.C., Bloomington, Indiana, and Sarasota, Florida. with blooms earlier this year in Chicago, Charleston, Illinois, and Winter Park, Florida. 

 Are they all related? One of most popular hypotheses right now is that the rampant blooming is due to US greenhouses and botanical gardens sharing seeds with one another, meaning most of the corpse flowers that are currently blooming are likely related unfortunately, little is known about the origins of many of the flowers currently blooming, so the “cousins” theory is difficult to verify.

Math? Another hypothesis is that corpse flowers are more popular now than ever among botanical gardens in the US, so more are blooming because, well, there are simply more of them and the planets have aligned where they are all blooming this year.

Science? Could it be that we are learning more about plant care and have enough facilities with the technology to create the ideal blooming environment for a happy plant. The crowds come to see the blooms bring business and the more blooms the more business.

what do you think?

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