Move over, Horace: It’s Frederick’s turn to make a stink.
Frederick, the “sibling” of last year’s corpse flower sensation at the Marjorie McNeely Conservatory at Como Park in St. Paul, is expected to bloom imminently (perhaps this weekend). With that bloom comes the rare and large tropical plant’s signature stink.
Just like last year, the corpse flower’s unfolding is expected to be a brief event — perhaps 24 to 48 hours — but the public will soon be able to watch the “Corpse Cam” if they aren’t able to visit Frederick. The public can tune in and get updates at comozooconservatory.org/frederick.
If this is a competition, as it often is with siblings, this could be a bigger year than last.
“It’s been interesting to see that Frederick is growing larger,” said Jen Love, the horticulturist who tends to both Horace and Frederick. “I’m not totally surprised, because the tuber weighed more.”
(Tubers, Love says, are akin to underground storage systems from which the blooms emerge.)
To put it in perspective: Frederick weighed 58 pounds the last time the plant was repotted, compared to Horace’s 40 pounds shortly before blooming.
It should make for a bigger show.
“Frederick is taller, which is great,” Love says. “Other than that, I expect them to have a lot of similarities. It still won’t be a record breaker by any means — it’s not uncommon for these blooms to be nine feet tall.”
Just how tall is Fred?
“This morning, it measured 68 inches,” Love said on Tuesday. “And it will keep growing until it’s ready to bloom. We will start measuring it daily now and as we see that growth rate really slow down, we’ll be able to narrow in on our prediction. So right now, we are predicting Thursday, but that is just an approximate guess.”
Fredrick and Horace’s roots
Guests gather around the corpse flower “Frederick” in the Marjorie McNeely Conservatory at Como Park in St. Paul on Tuesday. (Kathryn Kovalenko / Pioneer Press)
Frederick and Horace are true siblings, sharing the same parents. Started from seed in 2017 at the Greater Des Moines Botanic Garden, they were donated soon after to the Como Park Zoo & Conservatory.
(Later, the conservatory paid it forward, sending one tuber to the San Diego Botanic Garden and two to the Center for Conservation and Research at San Antonio Zoo.)
Horace was named after Horace Cleveland, described by the conservatory as “a key figure in shaping the St. Paul park system in the late 1800s.” This Horace bloomed for the first time in 2024 at the age of seven.
Frederick is named after Frederick Nussbaumer, who became the city’s parks superintendent in 1891, the conservatory says, “following four years as a gardener right here at Como Park.” While his brother rests this growing season, Frederick is preparing for his first bloom at age eight.
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Just like other corpse flowers, these tropical titans that typically only bloom every two or three years are a spectacle that draws in visitors.
“It’s the novelty, because it doesn’t bloom very frequently,” says Love. “Most people aren’t going to get to travel to Sumatra, so you’re not going to get to see one in the wild. And then it’s the size and the smell. It is the world’s largest unbranched inflorescence in the world.”
To a casual observer, the corpse flower looks like an ear of corn emerging from some leaves of lettuce. And the stink? That depends on your nose.
“It is really bad,” Love says. “I think it’s kind of a combination of rotting trash on a hot day and a dead mouse.”
There’s a purpose behind the smell, though.
“It’s a strategy the plant has for attracting the beetles, the flies — the things that would be attracted to a carcass are the insects that pollinate it,” Love says.
Frederick’s receiving line
In 2024, more than 30,000 visitors lined up to meet Horace within the conservatory, which is located within Como Park at 1225 Estabrook Drive.
Guests photograph “Horace,” a Corpse Flower beginning to bloom at the Marjorie McNeely Conservatory in Como Park in St. Paul on Thursday, May 23, 2024. (Derek Bourcy / Special to the Pioneer Press)
This year, Frederick is situated in the Palm Dome, a spot in the conservatory that better accommodates the expected lines, a place not impacted by early closures due to private events.
On their way to the Charlotte Partridge Ordway Japanese Garden on Tuesday, Kay Loeffler and her son, Isaac, paused to check out the informational displays about corpse flowers set up around Fred, who at that moment looked like a large but unassuming potted plant (and was not stinky yet).
“My only reference to the corpse flower is from the movie, ‘Dennis the Menace,’” said Loeffler with a laugh. “That’s the big thing, that it’s about to bloom, and Dennis ruins it for him.”
Frederick is behind ropes, and hopefully safe from any interrupting menaces.
The public, though, should be prepared to wait in a line outside: an umbrella for shade or rain and a water bottle would be a good idea, a spokesman said.
While admission to the Como Park Zoo & Conservatory is free, voluntary donations of $4 for adults and $2 for children are welcome. Hours are 10 a.m. to 6 p.m. daily, but the public can visit Frederick until 8 p.m. on Wednesday (June 18) due to a concert.
Endangered
A corpse flower in bloom is shown at the California Academy of Sciences’ Osher Rainforest in San Francisco, Wednesday, Feb. 28, 2024. (Jeff Chiu / Associated Press)
About 9,500 miles away from St. Paul, in the tropical rainforests of Sumatra, Indonesia, the corpse flower, Amorphophallus titanum, grows wild. Or doesn’t.
“I like to touch on some conservation messaging about it,” Love says of the corpse flower. “If you’re familiar with the IUCN (International Union for Conservation of Nature), it’s the organization that tracks species and their status in the wild. So its IUCN status is endangered. There are definitely fewer than 1,000 individuals left in the wild. The number that was actually tracked last count was only around 300.
“So even though botanical gardens have had a lot of success growing them so that we can share the information and keep the genetics going, we do really want people to understand that deforestation in Sumatra has really decimated their habitat.
“One of the key reasons the Sumatran rainforest is being deforested is to build or to plant more palm oil plantations,” she says. “Palm oil is in a lot of foods that we eat.”
It’s also used in other everyday products, including lipstick, chocolate and detergent, according to the World Wildlife Fund.
So what can we do?
“There’s actually an app I’d like people to use,” Love recommends. “It’s called PalmOil Scan and you can use it to help you choose products that use sustainable palm oil so that you can be more conscious of what’s happening in the habitat of Sumatra.”
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PalmOil Scan, according to the Cheyenne Mountain Zoo, is produced in collaboration with the World Association of Zoos and Aquariums. While the app’s messaging focuses on orangutans, Love says, the sustainability also applies to helping out corpse flowers.
Of course, the public can also support the corpse flower by visiting Como Park Zoo & Conservatory. Love saw that support happen last year.
“Honestly, it generated a lot more traffic than I thought it would,” Love says of the excitement over Horace. “But I know that people do get really interested in them. And a lot of botanic gardens see people turn out time after time, every time they bloom. And that’s one of the reasons we grow them — it’s a great way to get people excited about plants. And anything that gets people excited about plants is a good thing to grow.”
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