On the morning of 04 February, 2018 we again turned up at the Dunedin Botanic Garden glasshouse to view the titan arum or corpse flower (Amorphophallus titanum). The three photos below are our final photos.
See also: Titan Arum: Part One | Part Two | Part Three
Photos taken by Nigel. Dunedin Botanic Garden, Dunedin, New Zealand
We arrived about 15 minutes before opening time and to our amazement the door was opened shortly after our arrival. We had the luxury of viewing the open flower without lots of people around. For the record, the bad smell must have already dissipated overnight. Thank goodness!
Interesting fact: “Even under perfect conditions, the Titan arum takes about seven-to-10 years to flower from seed. The species has proven extremely difficult to cultivate, with flowerings at botanic gardens around the world hitting the headlines as a result.”
– from the Botanic Gardens of South Australia website
** Click on any photo to view large-size version **
Nigel and I are still amazed that we were privileged to see this incredible flower mature and bloom. The experience was everything we hoped it would be! Big thanks to Dunedin Botanic Garden for the work they’ve put in over the years to make this possible.
Dunedin Botanic Garden have a web page for the flowering of the titan arum and this includes excellent time-lapse film of the flower’s growth, opening and subsequent closing and collapse, for the period 24 January to 12 February 2018.
If you’ve enjoyed these posts and would like to see the flower for yourself simply do a web search on the name of a botanic garden near you and the name of the flower, Amorphophallus titanum. If its flowered there in the past you’re bound to get results as its a rare event and therefore makes the headlines. Then you can find out when they expect it might happen again. The plants are held in various places in the UK and USA, and Australia / New Zealand, and no doubt other places too.
Text by Liz and Photos by Nigel; Exploring Colour (2018)
Exploring Colour 
How amazing! Only around five of these cultivated flowers bloom worldwide each year, so seeing it like this is amazing. Yours looks slightly different in color and size.
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We’d never expected we’d get to see one in the south of the South Island, it was SO exciting for us 🙂 Yes, it’s interesting there’s some differences!
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Benjamin and I enjoyed the Corpse Flower posts immensely. This is a bit of magic from Mother Nature! Benjamin loved the time lapse video and has watched it over and over. How amazingly it folds back into itself instead of just falling over in a heap. Thank-you so much for sharing this fantastic experience!!
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It was VERY exciting to hear how much you and Benjamin enjoyed these Corpse Flower posts! Thanks so much for sharing this with me. Its wonderful that you watched the time lapse video as well. It adds so much to the story and I too was amazed at how it folds back into itself, I was incredulous actually, as I thought it would just collapse! Thank you Ellen!
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I enjoyed experiencing this amazing process vicariously, Liz. Thank you for sharing.
Best,
Tanja
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Thanks for reading Tanja!
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Thank you so much for sharing this, Liz. It’s beautiful. The time lapse is fantastic and surprisingly no wrinkled noses on the viewers. It’s certainly something worth seeing, the sort of thing you expect to see dinosaurs munching on.
I was amazed at how much movement there was from the other plants, rising to the sun and receding at night, like tides.
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Glad you enjoyed it Wendy! I loved the way the flower folded itself away after blooming – didn’t expect that!
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Awesome! It looks maybe 8 feet tall! Was the smell really unpleasant?
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It was awesome! Its hard to read the tape measure in the photo, possibly 1650mm or 1700mm, something like that. When we visited in the morning the smell had gone. If we had gone the night before it probably would have stunk! I was happy to not experience the smell 🙂
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Stunning!!!!
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Thank you very much 🙂
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You were able to see something very few others ever will. That’s cool !
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We were fortunate to be in the right city at the right time, which enabled us to make multiple visits. What a joy!
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Wow. That is so cool that you actually got to see the plant in bloom. I remember how big a deal it was last year when the US Botanical Gardens in Washington DC had three of these plants in bloom at the same time, but, alas, I did not go to see them.
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Thank you Mike, one of those magic memories we won’t forget in a hurry! Three in bloom at the same time sounds amazing.
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PS. perhaps that warrants being called a bouquet of titan arums 😉
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