Disappointing Corpse Flower in Chicago Needs Help Blooming

The corpse flower that has received so much attention at the Chicago Botanic Garden in Glencoe has been a bit of a disappointment. The flower not only has failed to bloom on its own, but it also failed to produce most of its powerfully pungent odor.

Dubbed "Spike," the flower's outer sheath or spathe was rubbery, which was a bad sign. This prompted officials to cut it off, though once they did they found that the female flowers were dried out.

"We could smell a bit of odor in the morning the last several days, but the odor today was much less than what it was a couple days ago so based on that it seems like it was past its prime," said Patrick Herendeen, research scientist, in an interview with CBS.

The male flowers actually did not mature while the female flowers were dried. If the male flowers do mature, though, the pollen will be frozen for future generations of corpse flowers.

A corpse flower isn't actually a single flower. Instead, it's a stalk of many flowers that are made up of a mixture of male and female flowers. These flowers are held out of sight at the base of the main "stem" of the plant and surrounded with a pleated skirt-like covering, called the spathe.

The plant usually requires 7 years before it blooms. However, it may take even lower. In the normal life cycle, the plant produces one single enormous branched leaf at a time. The leaf will go completely dormant for about 16 months while its underground tuber "rests." When it sprouts next, it will either produce a single leaf or an enormous bloom.

The corpse flower smells like, well, a corpse in order to attract insects. Because the flower can only sustain its bloom for a couple of days, it tries to attract as many pollinators as possible in order to ensure pollination.

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