Polytechnic

Cal Poly Plant Conservatory curator Gage Willey proudly shows off Cal Poly’s first ever corpse flower bloom. Photo by Joe Johnston.

Putting On a Show with the Corpse Flower

When a six-year-old corpse plant in the Cal Poly greenhouses shot up a green cone this summer, no one expected anything exciting. Other corpse plants housed at Cal Poly had produced similar cones in the past, and they usually grew into leaves.

But one day, Gage Willey, the curator of the Cal Poly Plant Conservatory, checked on the little cone and noticed something unique. The cone had developed enough to tell that it would blossom into a flower.

“When I saw that it was a flower, I yelled. I was so ecstatic,” Willey said. “All I could think is that this is actually happening, I get to be there firsthand and share it with our community; it’s going to be so wonderful. After that, it was off to the races.”

The corpse flower, also known as titan arum, Amorphophallus titanum, is native to the island of Sumatra. The plant makes the world’s largest unbranched inflorescence (cluster of flowers), but flowering is rare. The bloom can grow to more than 8 feet in height and over 3 feet in diameter.

When it flowers, the plant makes a huge stinky maroon funnel, called the spathe, with tiny flowers borne on a huge spike, which is called the spadix. The spathe sends a foul aroma into the still forest air for 24 hours to attract pollinators, then closes up.

Because corpse flowers are so rare, no one was quite sure when the plant, nicknamed Musty, would bloom. The College of Science and Math set up a livestream for the community to watch the plant in real time, as the faculty and students involved in Musty’s care watched it closely.

The team of faculty and students put their pandemic-appropriate plan into action, asking community members to wear masks and form a socially-distanced line, and only allowing one household in to see the plant at a time. But soon they noticed the line stretching longer and longer as people waited upwards of an hour to see the plant.

To take people’s minds off the long wait, and maximize the educational opportunity, the students mobilized, carrying plants from the conservatory out to the line.

“We wanted to keep people excited and happy, and we got the idea to keep them entertained,” said Jarene Brown, the conservatory’s head student curator. The students talked to community members about the different plants they were holding, such as carnivorous plants or calla lilies, which are related to corpse flowers.

Brown, a fourth-year crop science major, said she loved being able to teach so many people about plants — more than 3,000 people visited the corpse flower while it was blooming— and get people excited about them, too.

“Even though COVID’s going on, we were still able to come together and find a way for people to come interact with this plant,” Brown said. “We made it a really intimate experience by allowing people to take pictures and touch it and smell it. We allowed people to get in there and learn about this thing, even in a complicated situation.”

Jenn Yost, an associate professor in Biological Sciences and director of the Robert F. Hoover Herbarium, said the bloom was a valuable opportunity for the students as well as a unique experience for everyone who saw the flower.

“If this had bloomed at a botanical garden, you’d pay $20 to $30 to see it and you usually can’t get that close to it,” Yost said. “This whole experience felt very Cal Poly to me. We’re a public university and the public was invited. You could touch the flower and put your face in it, and the students had unprecedented access to run the whole show.”

By Gabby Ferreira