Northeast Gardening: Denver Botanic Corpse Flower about to bloom, 1 by gardenmart

gardenmart wrote:
Just once each cycle. It takes about ten years for the corm to get big enough to produce a flower and then depending on conditions 3-5 years or so between blooms. There are a few instances of some blooming back to back two years in a row and some reports that it took others another 10 years. The spathe will crumble in a couple of days, the spadix which has the reproductive parts {the true flowers} will put out a big seed stalk with red seeds if it has been pollinated. If you have ever seen a peace lily flower, that is what the flower parts look like inside the big petal. Denver says they are not pollinating theirs but collecting the pollen to send to another botanic garden who will then return the favor. The rest of the non-blooming years, they put out one giant leaf stalk that looks kind of like a patio umbrella. I saw the one at Franklin Park Zoo in Boston and they said that Morticia's corm weighed about 80 pounds. It was fun checking in all night on the webcam to see this unfurl. It really did take all night to do.
Here's a picture of Stinky from Denver taken from their webcam.
Martha