Carol the Corpse Flower
[Dr. Ashlee McCaskill, professor of biology]
This is the Amorphophallus titanum. The common name is the titan arum or the
corpse lily. This one's name is Carol, and she bloomed the very first time after
about eight or nine years here in the greenhouse. So we're very excited and so
happy that we can share her with everybody. One of Carol's common names
like I said is the corpse flower, and she gets that common name because of the
horrendous smell that she's emanating right now. You might ask why would a
flower smell like rotting meat, which is what it smells like, and that's to
attract pollinators. So she actually attracts carrion beetles and flesh flies.
They think they're going to get a meal when they show up coming for the
smell, but instead they're just going to pick up pollen and then hopefully take
it to another titan arum and pollinate it.
We're fortunate to actually have five
titan arums here at the University of North Georgia. When I was transplanting
Carol for the first time, I discovered that there were multiple corms in the
pot. So I separated them out. So now we have many titan arums at various stages
of development.