Corpses

The botanical people in Charlotte are all a-titter this week.

It seems that their “corpse plant” is starting to bloom. In the botanical world, that’s quite an achievement and this is the second or third time that they’ve pulled it off.

I’m not impressed, though.

I’ve managed to reduce countless plants to corpses over the years. Between last winter’s icy blasts and the heat wave we’ve had this year so far, I’ve managed to turn three substantial shrubs into cadavers recently.

My corpses don’t usually bloom, though.

For those not in the know, the “corpse plant” at the UNC Charlotte’s McMillan Greenhouse is actually the Amorphophallus titanum, which comes from the ancient greek and roughly translates to “giant shapeless penis” and is the largest flower in the world.

You’d think that the florists would have picked up on this for Valentine’s Day.



Of course, the defining characteristic of this plant isn’t the two foot tall bloom, but rather the fact that it puts out an odor like a rotting corpse.

That’s got to be a romance killer for most people.

The most recent plant corpse produced at our house happened to be one of my favorite plants. Called a “patio peach”, it stood at the corner of the driveway, a four-foot tall beacon that sported shocking pink blooms for a few days every spring.

For some reason, about the time this heatwave blasted into town it started to wilt.

I gave it more water, and would have climbed on top and done CPR if I thought it would have helped, but sometimes the patient’s outcome is clear.

In less than a week, it was brown, leaves sadly hanging on and the little peaches (which we never ate, but which produced lots of offspring when they fell on the ground and sprouted) were all shriveled.

Yesterday it was dug up and cut into pieces, along with the hydrangea tree and the evergreen that didn’t make it through the winter. It was a sad event for me, not just because of the loss of the landscaping, but because I was emotionally attached to these trees, especially the little peach. It moved around the yard 3 or 4 times before it finally settled into it’s position as sentinel of the driveway, and the space looks a little empty without it there now.

They’ve been set out for mass burial with the yard waste guys that will come by on Thursday, but in the meantime they’ll lie in state as a sad reminder of what they were and could have continued to be.

After all, you can’t keep a rotting corpse around forever, even if it is a giant shapeless penis.