Tomorrow is the beginning of everyone's favourite month. We have celebrations galore. May Day tomorrow, then May The Forth, Mother's Day, Victoria Day, and before we know it - it is June, another favourite month. May is a month of flowers filling the air with perfume.
Except in Masachusettes where there is a Corpse Flower (Titan arum) blooming in Talcott Greenhouse. With a name of Corpse Flower, you can easily guess it either looks weird or smells weird. It is the latter.
We have one in the Niagara Falls Greenhouse - it blooms every few years. It is a huge flower around 4 or 5 feet tall, and then one tall plant stalk comes after flowering - more than 20 feet high, like a tree. This is a plant that grows from a tuber which can weigh in the range of up to 200 pounds.
There might be some growing in its native Sumatra, but it is rare and endangered. It has found favour as a celebrity plant and has been spread all over the world in botanic conservatories as a novelty plant - it's that massive size and big smell of rotting flesh.
Stinking flesh plants are not rare - there are over 200 species of this plant. I have a small variety in the garden - and it will bloom in May - with its deep red spathe and its very big smell of dead flesh. The flies are everywhere. The dog looks at it confused. Visitors ask me why I would have a weird and stinky plant in the garden. I thought it is self-evident that that's why I would have it.
One of the many garden highlights of the Month of May.
Here it was blooming in the Niagara Falls greenhouse.
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