A flower that got its nickname from its putrid smell started to bloom on Friday at Dartmouth College for the first time since 2011.
Named Morphy, the titan arum — or corpse flower — began opening on Friday afternoon at the Ivy League college’s Life Sciences Greenhouse. The 2.3m flower was expected to be fully open yesterday before it starts to collapse today.
Morphy has a long pointy stalk with a skirt-like covering. It is green on the outside and deep red on the inside when it opens.
Dartmouth greenhouse manager Kim DeLong said Morphy was starting to smell like a burning cigar on Friday afternoon.
At full strength, its odor has been described as a cross between a decaying animal and urine.
DeLong said she was planning to pollinate the flower yesterday, using two paintbrushes and tweezers.
“Way down on the bottom, we’re going to cut a hole. It’s not going to hurt the plant. And then we’re going to collect pollen and pollinate the female flowers, and hopefully we’re going to get seeds in a year, once they mature,” DeLong said.
The idea is to share seeds and pollen with other conservatories, parks and greenhouses around the world, she said.
Titan arum is native to Sumatra’s equatorial rain forests and is among the most popular flowers when it blooms.
DeLong said it is endangered because of deforestation to make room for palm oil plantations.
“We want to do what we can to try to save it,” she said.
The greenhouse is open today from 10am to 3pm.
The university provided a link to a live Web cam of Morphy: www.dartmouth.edu/~grnhouse/morphy.html.
THE ‘MONSTER’: The Philippines on Saturday sent a vessel to confront a 12,000-tonne Chinese ship that had entered its exclusive economic zone The Philippines yesterday said it deployed a coast guard ship to challenge Chinese patrol boats attempting to “alter the existing status quo” of the disputed South China Sea. Philippine Coast Guard spokesman Commodore Jay Tarriela said Chinese patrol ships had this year come as close as 60 nautical miles (111km) west of the main Philippine island of Luzon. “Their goal is to normalize such deployments, and if these actions go unnoticed and unchallenged, it will enable them to alter the existing status quo,” he said in a statement. He later told reporters that Manila had deployed a coast guard ship to the area
A group of Uyghur men who were detained in Thailand more than one decade ago said that the Thai government is preparing to deport them to China, alarming activists and family members who say the men are at risk of abuse and torture if they are sent back. Forty-three Uyghur men held in Bangkok made a public appeal to halt what they called an imminent threat of deportation. “We could be imprisoned and we might even lose our lives,” the letter said. “We urgently appeal to all international organizations and countries concerned with human rights to intervene immediately to save us from
RISING TENSIONS: The nations’ three leaders discussed China’s ‘dangerous and unlawful behavior in the South China Sea,’ and agreed on the importance of continued coordination Japan, the Philippines and the US vowed to further deepen cooperation under a trilateral arrangement in the face of rising tensions in Asia’s waters, the three nations said following a call among their leaders. Japanese Prime Minister Shigeru Ishiba, Philippine President Ferdinand Marcos Jr and outgoing US President Joe Biden met via videoconference on Monday morning. Marcos’ communications office said the leaders “agreed to enhance and deepen economic, maritime and technology cooperation.” The call followed a first-of-its-kind summit meeting of Marcos, Biden and then-Japanese prime minister Fumio Kishida in Washington in April last year that led to a vow to uphold international
US president-elect Donald Trump is not typically known for his calm or reserve, but in a craftsman’s workshop in rural China he sits in divine contemplation. Cross-legged with his eyes half-closed in a pose evoking the Buddha, this porcelain version of the divisive US leader-in-waiting is the work of designer and sculptor Hong Jinshi (洪金世). The Zen-like figures — which Hong sells for between 999 and 20,000 yuan (US$136 to US$2,728) depending on their size — first went viral in 2021 on the e-commerce platform Taobao, attracting national headlines. Ahead of the real-estate magnate’s inauguration for a second term on Monday next week,
RSS