Measurement, Hydrophobicity, and Name of the Corpse Flower Posted on May 2nd, 2007 by Brian O'Brien

The Corpse Flower’s height topped one meter today – our measurement was 102 cm (note the enhanced stick – a two-meter stick rather than a meter stick). Alex, on the other hand, is still roughly the same size that he was a few days ago. The photos are from May 1 and May 2.

Alex has fitted the growth data to an equation; this will be part of his Sigma Xi Research Symposium presentation on Amorphophallus titanum on Friday (May 4).

The greenhouse room in which the Corpse Flower resides appears to be a bit too low in humidity, leading to some browning of the tips of the spathe, so we started misting the inflorescence several times a day with reverse osmosis water from a pump sprayer. This operation revealed a remarkable physicochemical property of the spadix – it is essentially completely water-repellent. Water from the sprayer just bounces off. Some water pools in indentations in the top of the spadix, as can be seen in the photo.

Dan Oachs, a member of our Web Team and one of the operators of the webcams and the creator of the stop-motion videos, asked if the plant had a name, one such as would be given to a pet. This idea was discussed for a while among many students, staff, and faculty, and it was thought that our titanum probably should be named after one of the Titans. This was somewhat problematic, since many of the Titans were not particularly good role models/nice entities. This is Minnesota, after all, so ‘nice’ is, for many, a desirable quality. ‘Cronos’, for instance, was rapidly ruled out (see: http://homepage.mac.com/cparada/GML/Cronos.html ). We settled on ‘Hyperion’, the Titan associated with intellectual activity and observation (see: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hyperion_%28mythological%29 and http://www.theoi.com/Titan/TitanHyperion.html ).

Brandy Russell, one of our chemistry faculty members, suggested that “Perry” be used as a nickname for day-to-day discussion of Hyperion. So – Perry it is. Perry the Titan.

See the Titan Arum webcam for a live look at the plant. The image is renewed at five-minute intervals. We now have three cameras linked (distant, top-down, and close-up). The close-up camera will be moved occasionally so as to provide different views.