Amorphophallus titanum

New Reekie, our extraordinary titan arum

The endangered Amorphophallus titanum (titan arum) is famously known for its size, smell, and the relative rarity of its bloom. Often called the corpse flower in honour of its unforgettable stench during flowering, our sensational plant is affectionately called New Reekie (a nod to Edinburgh's nickname 'Auld Reekie').

A first for Scotland

The spectacular flowering of New Reekie at the Royal Botanic Garden Edinburgh in 2015 was a first for Scotland and marked the culmination of years of expert care by the Garden's horticulturists to successfully replicate the conditions this rare plant would experience in its native West Sumatra rain forest. Since then, New Reekie has flowered five times so far, most recently in July 2024.

Blooming marvellous Amorphophallus

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[Dr Mark Hughes, Tropical Diversity Botanist] This plant's so special, first of all, because of its amazing appearance, so it's a real joy for visitors, and it's a great connection between people and plant diversity, and it's a really excellent representative of the endangered tropical flora that we're working here so hard to conserve as well. We've been working with Chicago Botanic Garden to understand how many times the plant's been introduced into cultivation, to understand the genetic diversity of the plants in cultivation as well, so we've done some DNA fingerprinting work, and this is gonna help us make breeding pairs so we can preserve the genetic diversity of this endangered plant in cultivation.

[Paulina Maciejewska-Daruk, Glasshouse Horticulturist] To me, it smelled always like a food bin when it's ready for collection, but for other people it smelled like rotting meat or fish, old socks, cheese and onion, this kind of smell. The only purpose of the plant producing that kind of smell is to attract pollinators. In this case, there would be flies and carrion beetles that would feast on rotting flesh.

[Nate Kelso, Glasshouse Horticulturist] This plant has been really unusual in that we've had it flowering five times. We thought when it first flowered that it would only go the once, and then it might die afterwards, but we've managed to keep it going for a long time, because once the flower died down, the corm was still exceptionally big, and as long as it has a corm that it can still produce a leaf from, it's going to keep going pretty much infinitely.

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