WHAT SMELLS?

STINKBOMB GOES BLOOM

Crowds gathered this summer at UCSC for the corpse flower’s once-in-a-

decade blooming. PHOTO: ERIN MALSBURY

Hell Reek

UCSC gets corpse ower mania—and yes, it smells just as terrible as you’ve heard

BY ERIN MALSBURY

The award for stinkiest roommate on campus goes to … a plant. The corpse ower, as the Titan arum is commonly called, produces a stench that UCSC Arboretum director Martin Quigley describes as “dead meat, overlaid with some feces and vomit, and a touch of dead sh.”

Not exactly the delicate notes we’ve come to associate with flowers. But this olfactory abomination still managed to attract thousands of people to the arboretum when it bloomed this summer. Like flies to— well, this flower. After all, its main pollinators are flies and beetles that lay their eggs in rotting meat.

In the short blooming window, which was about a day total, cars lined Empire Grade along the edge of campus, and people of all ages showed up to get a whiff.

Crowd descriptions of the scent ranged from “aging roadkill” to “the time I fell into a septic tank.”

The event proved wildly successful, but it almost didn’t happen.

UP FROM THE UNDERGROUND

The Arboretum received three little Titan arum corms—the bulb-like, underground stem that sustains the plant—from UC Davis in 2012. They were about the size of a penny.

The Indonesian plant needs a tropical greenhouse to survive, and two of the corms didn’t make it. But each year, the remaining plant grows one big leaf that photosynthesizes for several months and then dies back.

After 10 years of that cycle, it had finally stored enough energy to produce a flower.

The arboretum staff brought the plant down from its greenhouse to display it outside, and watched in wonder as the flower bud grew taller each day. At its peak, the plant was nearly five feet tall.

After 11 days, it began exhibiting the telltale signs of blooming. Bracts—leaf-like protections around the flower—dried up and peeled away, and the temperature began rising.

“This is a plant that generates heat biochemically,” says Quigley. “And that heat is put out in order to lift its stink up above the jungle canopy and spread it out throughout the forest.”

The arboretum announced the imminent bloom over social media. Hundreds of people flocked to it, waiting for the infamous funk to waft their way.

But after a few hours, the flower began to reverse course. The temperature dropped, and people trickled out the door.

“After careful consideration, we reached the conclusion that our corpse flower is truly a corpse. We do not believe it is going to bloom after all,” the arboretum announced on social media the next day.

But in another twist, its temperature started rising again a few days later.

“All of a sudden, it had started up again,” says Quigley. “By 9pm, it was fully open. By 10, the stink was maximum, and we cut the bottom open to expose the female flowers and apply the pollen we had gotten from the Huntington.”

The public crowded in the next morning to see and smell the rare flower.

The arboretum had surrounded the plant with humidifiers and heaters, but Quigley believes the cool Santa Cruz nights stressed the plant out and nearly caused it to abort the flower.

“I think it was the temperature, but it had enough energy stored up to start up again,” he says. “We got lucky. That's all I can say.”

BRANCHING OUT

The corpse ower bloom drew both regular patrons and rst-time visitors to the area.

“Thousands of people who had never even thought about the arboretum before or heard of it suddenly became caught up in the story of this amazing plant,” says Quigley. He hopes it will inspire people to learn more about the gardens and the work that goes on there.

The UCSC Arboretum began in 1964 as a scientific collection for studying the links between plants and climate as well as evolution. Now, Quigley calls it “the gardens of the future for the Central California coast.”

“We have blooming plants all year round that are not irrigated at all,” he explains. The arboretum introduced Australian and South African plants like kangaroo paws and pincushion proteas to the public 8 >

ALL GROWN UP When the UCSC Arboretum received the earliest form of this corpse flower plant from UC Davis in 2012, it was about the size

of a penny. PHOTO: ERIN MALSBURY

< 7 in the ’70s and ’80s, and they continue to help local growers create drought-loving landscapes.

“Instead of having lawns and hydrangeas and hostas and things that need watering three times a week—or some people water their lawns every day—why not have a beautiful lush green garden that doesn't need irrigation?” says Quigley.

In addition to selling plants, the arboretum staff care for a variety of native, rare and exotic plants and maintain a seed bank of species from around California.

“We sort them, count them and document it all,” says Sylvie Amstutz, a fourth-year environmental studies student who has worked at the arboretum for two and a half years.

Amstutz works primarily in the California Native Plant Conservation Program at the arboretum, and her tasks vary from day to day. She waters, weeds, plants and tends different species.

“I learn something new all the time,” she says.

Amstutz started out by interning in the Interactive Ecology program for a quarter. When everything else was remote, the arboretum provided a hands-on way to connect to campus.

“It definitely turned my experience around, and it made being in Santa Cruz feel a lot more worthwhile,” she says.

As part of her senior year, Amstutz plans to bolster the interactive ecology curriculum.

“There's limited staff and organization for the internship,” she says. “So I’ve been really excited about trying to reflect on my experience and my peers’ experiences and help future students and interns have a really enriching experience here.”

Despite hosting internships, class field trips and research, the arboretum does not receive funding from the university.

“There's definitely always a struggle of having enough capacity and staff members and everything to try and get all of the work done that we want to,” says Amstutz.

The pandemic made things worse, as many of the gardens’ docents could no longer volunteer and have not returned.

“We're getting by with smoke and mirrors,” says Quigley. “And I'm good at juggling smoke and mirrors. But it's very discouraging.”

The arboretum operates mainly on donations, grants and plant sales.

“Physics doesn't have to stop and have a bake sale to buy their chemicals,” says Quigley. “And chemistry doesn't have to sell candy bars to pay salaries. But we're expected somehow to do the work we do, plus raise money.”

He hopes that in the future the university will recognize the arboretum as worthy of funding.

“We have the best southern hemisphere collections in the northern hemisphere—period,” he says. “There's no other garden in the northern hemisphere like Santa Cruz.” The UCSC Arboretum is on Arboretum Road on the UCSC campus, 1156 High Road, Santa Cruz, 831-502-2998. arboretum.ucsc.edu.