Botanical Garden braces for blooming corpse plant

BERKELEY — The University of California Botanical Garden at Berkeley, nestled in Strawberry Canyon just above the central campus, features a mind-boggling 12,000 kinds of plants and breathtaking views of the Bay Area. The term breathtaking soon will describe the rotten flesh-like stench of the garden’s about-to-blossom Titan Arum, also known as the corpse plant. This will be the sixth Titan Arum flower to fascinate visitors to the garden’s Tropical House since 2005. But the still rare event, a plant world equivalent of a gasp-inducing car wreck, always draws crowds. “I've been watching this plant for the past week, but just got the final confirmation that it will be a bloom,” Paul Licht, director of the UC Botanical Garden and a professor emeritus of integrative biology, said Wednesday. “We expect it to start growing quite quickly now, and it can easily grow up four inches a day. This particular corpse plant has grown four inches, to about 25 inches, since Sunday and is expected to continue at a rapid pace until it reaches an exceptionally stinky and spectacular crescendo – in the form of a bright green and deep maroon flower – probably around July 1.