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©2006 website by Gone West
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issue #4

The CORPSE FLOWER

What kind of flowers does your corpse want for Valentines Dead? Why a "Corpse Flower," of corpse. It's the world's largest and smelliest flower. It even SMELLS like a corpse. Think of a thousand rancid camel farts are you're getting warm.

Best known for its strong putrid smell, the Corpse Flower, or Titan arum, emits an odor that has been compared with the smell of rotting flesh and can be detected from half a mile away. The pungent odor that arrives with the bloom is the strongest for the first several hours and usually peaks at night. The stench is meant to attract pollinators (such as carrion beetles and flesh flies that are found in the plant's native Sumatra) a major island of Indonesia.

But Corpse Flowers are a tad difficult to come by. Try the inner equatorial rain forests of Sumatra. But they should be easy to spot. The plant, known as Titan arum (or Amorphophallus titanum) has flowering Jack-and-The-Bean stalk, which can grow as high as 10 feet (3 meters), produces a bloom that opens to a diameter of 3 to 4 feet (1-1.2 meters). The Corpse Flower is the largest flower in the world. But the open flower usually only lasts about 48 hours, so don't blink.

The flower grows from a subterranean tuber which weighs up to 170 pounds. A day or two after the plant reaches full bloom, the Corpse Flower collapses from its own weight and withers away, likely never to bloom again.

The "Corpse Flower" bloomed for the first time in the United States at the New York Botanical Gardens in 1937.

So, how about a bouquet of Corpse Flowers for your corpse lover this Valentines Dead?

As for delivery... bring a crane.

Courtesy of Ron Sawyer Editor, Livid Looking Glass Magazine

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