By Angus Dalton
John Siemon should have been on hand as curtains fell on the live-streamed corpse flower named Putricia, which drew 1.7 million views and 27,000 in-person visitors to the Royal Botanic Garden in Sydney to witness her spectacular, sulfuric bloom.
Instead of crying and dancing with his staff as a flaccid Putricia was finally closed to the public at midnight on Friday after a two-day flowering, Siemon was rushing south-west of the city with a critical delivery: Putricia’s pollen.
Behind closed doors and with the livestream switched off, the collapsing Putricia has been fertilised.Credit: Royal Botanic Gardens Sydney
The short-lived pollen of the botanical beast was bound for the refrigerators of the Mount Annan PlantBank, where it awaits analysis and participation in a genetic quest to save the critically endangered Sumatran flower.
“There’s been a global conservation effort to understand the pedigree of their genetics, much like horses or zoo animals, where elephants, lions, tigers are exchanged to get the best genetic conservation outcome,” Siemon, director of horticulture at the gardens, said.
“Putricia forms part of a global network … we wish to make sure that we contribute to the best global conservation outcome by exchanging pollen with other institutions.”
Hidden within a corpse flower’s flesh-red spathe is a ring of pollen-producing “male” sacs and, below those, a ring of female flowers. They mature at different times over the flower’s 24-hour bloom.
Pollen oozing from Putricia’s male organs, above the dark purple stems of her female flowers, which have been fertilised in the hopes they produce berries and seeds.Credit: John Siemon
Corpse flowers are capable of generating extraordinary heat at the peak of their fertility.Credit: John Siemon
“She intentionally offsets maturation of her female organs from her male organs by about 24 hours so that she doesn’t self-pollinate herself and end up with inbred progeny,” Siemon said.
The female flowers matured late on Thursday night. Siemon and his team transformed Putricia’s visitor-packed glasshouse into an operating theatre, hacking a hole in her skirt so they could painstakingly hand-fertilise her with a paintbrush and donated pollen.
On Friday, it was time for the male pollen sacs to mature. “When they reach maturation, they are like pimples being squeezed, and the pollen oozes out in long white strands.”
The extraordinary corpse flower life cycle.Credit: Huntington Botanical Gardens and California Science Centre
The botanical scientists rummaged through their plant pathology lab, searching for the perfect pollen-extracting tool. They landed on a dessert spoon, and cut another portal in the back of Putricia’s skirt to scrape away the pollen.
Meanwhile, signs are good that Thursday’s intimate pollination operation worked. The pollen has stuck well to the sticky female stigmas. Now, Putricia’s ovaries will swell, hopefully, and begin to develop into a cone of bright red berries that yield seeds.
And then she will fully collapse into the dirt. Her 15-kilogram underground bulb or “corm” will sprout a large, tree-like leaf to reach for the sun and photosynthesise.
Putricia in full bloom on Thursday night.Credit: Janie Barrett
The tree will start storing starch again in her corm for about a year before it dies, only to sprout again, bigger. The process will continue over five to seven years until there’s a plant so tall it would scrape the ceiling of Putricia’s Palm House.
Eventually, the corm will have enough stored energy to rise again as a gigantic, putrid bloom, to begin the cycle once more.
“It’s been incredibly humbling to see that excitement and buzz about our work – that we got a chance to show people we’re not just about the pretty flowers, that we’re a critical cultural institution doing globally important plant conservation.
“And Putricia’s the conduit for that.”
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