Weapons of the world's most rotten flowers

Titan arum has been dubbed the world's most sniffling flower, because it produces chemicals that smell rotting corpses.

Learn the weapon of the world's most rotten flower

The world's most sniffling flower has rotting flesh called Titan arum (Amorphophallus titanum). In 1878, botanist Italy Odoardo Beccari was the first Westerner to observe Titan arum trees in the equatorial tropical forest of western Sumatra, Indonesia. Titan arum is then brought back to plant in many parts of the world such as England and America.

Thousands of people flocked to see Titan arum bloom at the Royal Botanic Gardens (RBGE), Scotland, in June 2015.(Photo: Express.co.uk)

Growing arum titanium is not work for impatient people. 10 years after planting, Titan arum just blooms. After that, it will flower irregularly, every few years. The tree has a giant underground tuber, weighing up to 75 kg.

When blooming, the tree looks like a giant flower. The petals are blue like a dress called a mo, and the pointed tip in the middle is called a b- mo. These structures contain thousands of small flowers, botanists call the inflorescence.

Titan arum also has another name "scavenger flower" or "rotting plant" . The stench attracts many pollinators like beetles that eat meat and flies. Mo is green outside but the head is red like meat.

The blooming Titan arum flowers produce quite a lot of heat, up to 36 degrees Celsius, impressing insects that cause them to crawl on the mo and lay eggs on what is thought to be rotten meat. This process helps transport and pollinate plants.

A few years ago, scientists at the Royal Botanic Gardens (RBGE), Scotland, discovered that the two main molecules responsible for creating the terrible smell of Titan arum flowers are dimethyl disunide (DMDS) and dimethyl Trisulfua (DMTS). . In small quantities, DMDS and DMTS molecules make beer lose flavor (DMDS is a by-product of beer fermentation.

The team also looked at many different species of Amorphophallus , including Titan arum, and found that they mostly produced DMDS and DMTS. Some species use other molecules such as organic acids found on "sweaty skin" , as well as indole (a molecule partially responsible for producing human feces odor).

Only Amorphophallus is not the only botanical strain that creates a scary smell like this. South African stinkhorn mushroom (clathrus archeri) also produces DMDS, causing them to smell dead mice. Flowers Helicodiceros muscivorus found in Sardinia, Italy and Corsica, France smells like dead horses. It uses dimethyl sulfide (DMS) as well as DMDS and DMTS to attract green flies.