Rare plant at Disney is stunner and stinker
The 5-foot-tall bloom's odor of rotting flesh startles guests at the Animal Kingdom.
To 9-year-old Holly Tracey, it looks like "a banana."
Her brother, Conner, 11, disagreed: "It looks like a witch's hat."
Their father, Mick Tracey, brought his family from Huddersfield, England, to explore Disney's Animal Kingdom. But what grabbed their attention Saturday was no animal.
It was a rare, 5-foot-1 plant with a striking shape and a stinky smell, whose short-lived bloom is like few others in this world.
After six years of special care in a Disney greenhouse, the Amorphophallus titanum -- or Titan Arum, for short -- is finally blooming. It started at 3 p.m. Friday, when the plant's sheath began to unfurl, revealing its frilly, purple interior. The bloom is expected to last through today.
But this plant produces no colorful flowers, just a yellowish spire with the porous consistency of a loofah sponge. And instead of a delectable fragrance, this so-called bloom emerges from its sheath emitting a foul odor, akin to -- take your pick -- dead fish or rotting flesh.
Nevertheless, this Titan is Jim Thompson's "baby."
The Disney horticulturist is as proud as a new papa as he explains to a growing crowd of gawking park guests that this type of plant has bloomed fewer than 30 times in the United States since the first time in 1937.
Thompson is a walking encyclopedia when it comes to Titans. A native of Sumatra in Indonesia, the plant grows from a tuber underground, he said.
When it was planted recently near a walkway between the Africa and Asia sections of the park, the Titan weighed 40 pounds. Some grow to 170 pounds.
By Friday its spire had nearly doubled its height in a week, growing from 37 inches to 60.5 inches. The energy required for that growth spurt produces a temperature of about 95 degrees -- close to that of a human body, Thompson said.
What park guests can't see are the tiny male and female flowers inside the sheath at the base of the plant. The female flowers are receptive to pollen from male flowers from another Titan. In the wild, the pollen is carried by insects to female flowers in other blooming Titans.
Thompson did the honors Saturday by lightly dusting the Titan's female flowers with a pollen-covered cosmetic brush taped to a long stick. Because there aren't any others blooming nearby, he imported the pollen from Texas.
It's the plant's only way of reproducing, he explained.
The result: up to 500 berries that each contain two seeds. When the bloom and its sheath shrivel, a stump is left to produce the berries.
"It takes the seeds nine months to gestate," Thompson said. "That's a very long time for a plant to go, living on its tuber. It takes a lot out of the plant."
That may be the reason Titans bloom only once every five or so years, he said. And not every Titan blooms that often. Some plants produce a huge leaf up to 20 feet tall, instead of a bloom.
The plant is one of four Titans donated six years ago to Disney by the Fairchild Tropical Botanic Garden in Coral Gables. Two have produced leaves, and the third one is on the verge of either producing a leaf or bloom, Thompson said.
Saturday's Titan crowd was clearly fascinated with Thompson's dissertation on the prehistoric-looking plant. Cameras clicked, and mothers lifted small children for a better look.
"I've never seen anything that big," said Beth Johnston of Roscoe, Ill. She said she had never heard of the plant.
"It's amazing how it grows so quickly," noted Richard Neal of Leichester, England. "It smells like a big garbage bin."
Although nasty smells aren't exactly part of the Disney image, Beth Stevens, vice president of Animal Kingdom and its programs, was thrilled with the park's Titan coup.
"To have a very rare flower is a huge accomplishment for us and connects our guests to the natural world," she said. "It's all about the circle of life."
Sandra Mathers can be reached at
smathers@orlandosentinel.comor 407-420-5507.
Genus: Amorphophallus titanum
Origin: Discovered in Sumatra, Indonesia, in 1878.
Bloom height: Up to 12 feet in the wild. The first cultivated plant bloomed in England in 1889. Fewer than 30 plants have bloomed in the United States.
Weight: The root tuber can weigh up to 170 pounds.
Heat index: The fast-growing bloom, or spire, heats up to about 95 degrees, close to human body temperature.
Bloom frequency: About once every five years. Sometimes the plant produces a giant leaf that can grow 20 feet tall, instead of a bloom.
Propagation: A single pollinated plant produces up to 500 berries containing 2 seeds each.
SOURCE: Animal Kingdom
