The titan arum!
If you would like to be informed as soon as the next titan arum flowers, please sign up for our mailing list and you will receive an email as soon as the show starts at the next flowering.
New flowering
The flowering of the titan arum is a rare fragrance and colour spectacle that lasts only 48 to 72 hours. This extraordinary event is also an opportunity to make people aware of the threats to this remarkable species and draw attention to the action we are taking - and which you can support - to conserve them!
10 football fields per minute!
The titan arum (Amorphophallus titanum), also known as the corpse - or penis plant, is only found in the wild in Sumatra, where it grows in tropical forests. It blooms between October and March, during the rainy season. The plant is considered the largest 'flower' in the world, with an inflorescence that can be more than 3 metres tall.
Unfortunately, the tropical rainforest is disappearing faster and faster.... By 2023, the world had lost 3.7 million hectares of primary tropical rainforest, equivalent to 10 football fields every minute. As a result, the titan arum is one of the plants threatened with extinction in the wild; large areas of its forest habitat are being cleared for timber and to make way for palm oil plantations.
Botanical gardens, including Meise Botanic Garden, therefore play a crucial role in the ex situ conservation of this endangered plant.
Craftsmanship
Meise Botanic Garden saw its first titan arum bloom in 2008, attracting more than 8,000 visitors in just a few days. Since then, eighteen titan arums have flowered, attracting large numbers of visitors each time.
Getting a titan arum in bloom remains a rarity. Thanks to the skill of our gardeners, who pamper and care for our titan arum, we now have five healthy adult specimens in the collection. Of these, one or more blooms alternate every year, which is no easy task. Only with the right temperature, humidity and nutrition can this excellent result be achieved.
In addition to our mature specimens, we got some 'babies' in 2017. That year, two specimens flowered almost at the same time. We were able to conduct a pollination experiment with pollen from one of the two titan arums and pollen from a specimen from the Ghent Botanic Garden. This expanded our collection by about 50 seedlings.
Pollination
In 2024, we repeated the scientific pollination experiment. In late May, one of our specimens bloomed where we took pollen. With this, we pollinated the specimen that flowered in early July. The fruits and seeds resulting from these pollinations help increase the genetic diversity of individuals in the collection.
We also exchange them with other botanical gardens that, like Meise Botanic Garden, are developing research and conservation programmes for the species. In this way, we have already given a total of more than forty plants to eleven botanical gardens in Europe. Our gardener Stijn usually goes on site himself to give a training on growing and caring for the titan arum. A fun fact: one of the 2017 seedlings bloomed for the first time last year in Nancy's botanical garden. In this way, the network of botanical gardens helps keep these and other plant species alive and save them from extinction.
In Meise, thanks to the recently inaugurated "Green Ark", we can carry out advanced research and conservation programmes for endangered species such as the titan arum.
Help us save the titan arum!
Help us continue our scientific research, which is vital to address global challenges such as the biodiversity crisis, climate change and food security. Your support is crucial! Thank you very much for your donation*.
* Donations of €40 or more are tax deductible.
