Cultivation

The Titan arum, or Corpse Flower blooms in the wild on an infrequent and mostly undetected basis and is even more rare to bloom when cultivated in public greenhouses around the world.  It was discovered in Sumatra in 1878, and seeds were returned and grown to a mature blooming plant 11 years later at the Royal Botanical Garden at Kew in London.  Since then only around 60 blooms have been recorded in cultivation. 

The Corpse Flower grows well in an environment with humidity at or near 50%, with temperatures in the lower 80’s . The plant enjoys shade, but blooms more readily in the open.  It needs a very well drained soil media as it is extremely susceptible to root and stem rot.

Seedlings are becoming more available in the greenhouse trade, the result of manual cross-pollination using frozen pollen from other recent blooming plants.  The Myriad Botanical Gardens will attempt to pollinate this rare and endangered plant species with frozen pollen from the Fairchild Tropical Botanic Garden in Miami using pollen from a plant that bloomed in mid May 2005.