Evolutionary studies make sense of the world’s strangest plant
he blooming of a titan arum, or corpse plant, is a spectacle like none other in the plant world. A pale spike resembling the decaying finger of a buried giant pushes up from the earth until it towers 10 feet above the ground.
A massive petal-like structure unfurls to form a blood-red cape around the finger. The smell of rotting flesh fills the air. Then, some 36 hours later, the bloom is over. Seven years or more may pass before it happens again. With its putrid stench, alien appearance and peculiar habits, the corpse plant disgusts and fascinates in equal measure. At any given time, botanical gardens, arboretums and nurseries around the world are making plans to share news about their specimen. They don’t know exactly when it will bloom—the titan arum works on no one’s schedule but its own—but they need to be ready when it does: this species,, often brings in more traffic to botanical institutions than any other species in their collections. It’s not just the general public that finds the titan arum so captivating. Scientific interest in this monstrosity dates back to at least the late 1800s, when Italian botanists first formally described the species, which is endemic to the rainforests of western Sumatra. Researchers have been studying this floral phenomenon ever since.. By purchasing a subscription you are helping to ensure the future of impactful stories about the discoveries and ideas shaping our world today. In my research as a plant evolutionary biologist, I mostly study members of an entirely different group of plants, the ferns. But I find myself drawn to the corpse flower because its mix of features suggests that it has an especially interesting evolutionary history. Recent investigations have illuminated how the corpse plant acquired its bizarre traits. The findings not only help to explain why the plant is the way it is but also offer fascinating examples of little-known factors that can significantly influence evolutionary outcomes. Put simply, the corpse flower can teach us about how evolution works. To appreciate the corpse plant, it helps to understand its structure. When it’s not in bloom—the vast majority of the time—the plant basically consists of a giant tuberlike stem, which sits underground and stores energy in the form of starch, and a single massive leaf that grows aboveground and superficially resembles a small tree. The leaf lasts for about a year, producing food through photosynthesis and sending it to the tuber for safekeeping. When the leaf dies, the tuber goes dormant for a few months before sending up another leaf to convert sunlight into food.Once the tuber is big enough to fuel a more ambitious undertaking, the corpse plant can flower. It may be 10 years old before it can manage this feat. When it’s time to bloom, the plant produces a structure called an inflorescence instead of the usual leaf. This inflorescence is the bloom. It’s composed of two primary parts: the fingerlike spadix and the capelike spathe. Although it might seem unfamiliar, this floral structure is similar to that of the peace lily have evolved multiple times, most often in species that are pollinated by carrion insects. They propose that large blossoms are adaptations to these pollinators, emitting more odor and enticing more insects to linger in their warm chambers, where they are safe from predators. Furthermore, just as these insects are attracted to big animal carcasses when choosing a place to lay their eggs, presumably because they provide more abundant food resources for developing larvae, so, too, may they be drawn to larger blossoms of carcass-mimicking plants. And attracting more pollinators increases the odds of a plant’s reproductive success. But if the preferences of pollinators are driving the evolution of the corpse plant’s extreme proportions, why does it have such minuscule flowers? If there was selection for bigger blooms, why didAlthough the corpse plant looks like a tree when it is not in bloom, the structure that resembles a trunk with branches and leaves is actually a single leaf.Before we can attempt to solve this mystery, we need to know about the timing of the evolution of these two traits: Which one evolved first? It’s the age-old chicken-and-egg question, and as in the case of that poultry-themed paradox, the answer lies in the evolutionary family tree. Let’s start with actual chickens as an example. If we look at birds and their closest relatives—the crocodilians, turtles, snakes and lizards—we see that with few exceptions, the species in these lineages lay eggs. We can conclude from that observation that their common ancestor laid eggs. Ergo, the egg came before the chicken.If we look at the evolutionary tree of the corpse plant, we see that every member of its family, Araceae, has small flowers. So do many members of other families in its order, Alismatales, and related groups such as Acorales, Petrosaviales and some members of Dioscoreales. To find entire lineages that have larger flowers, we have to traverse several orders of branches outside the Alismatales to the Liliales. This pattern tells us that small flowers came before the massive inflorescence in the evolution of the corpse plant lineage. The ancestral presence of those tiny flowers might have determined the evolutionary trajectory of the corpse plant. Todd Barkman of Western Michigan University and his colleagues studied rates of flower-size evolution. They found that lineages whose ancestors had large individual flowers tended to have higher rates of floral-size evolution than lineages descended from small-flowered forms. In other words, larger flowers beget larger flowers. This is what they think occurred in, a genus of carrion-pollinated plants native to Southeast Asia that have the largest individual flowers in the world, each one around the size of a beach ball. In the corpse plant and its close relatives, however, flowers are small, so rates of size evolution in the individual flowers are also low. In the face of selection pressure from carrion pollinators for larger blossoms, variants with larger overall bloom sizes are more likely to emerge than variants with larger individual flowers. In 2022 researchers documented a bloom measuring more than 14 feet tall in the rainforest of West Sumatra--one of the largest on record. The species is endangered; fewer than 1,000 individuals are estimated to remain in the wild.Once a plant starts down the path of developing a bigger inflorescence instead of a larger flower, it undergoes a kind of ratchet effect whereby large inflorescences give rise to ever larger inflorescences, and the alternative evolutionary path of selection acting on individual flower size becomes less and less likely. The fact that giant inflorescences in plants outside the corpse plant’s family such as sunflowers, figs and palms generally contain lilliputian flowers supports this idea., the talipot palm, has an inflorescence up to 26 feet in length—the longest in the world—that may hold as many as 25 million diminutive golden flowers. What this tells us about evolution is that where selection acts in an organism depends on the history of that particular lineage. Did a plant’s ancestors have small flowers clustered into inflorescences, or did they have a single-flowered stalk? If the former, selection might have favored larger inflorescences, as in. The corpse plant highlights the importance of these historical contingencies. The titan arum is obviously spectacular to behold. But there’s more to it than immediately meets the eye—or nose. The next time one blooms near you, I hope you’ll join the crowd of spectators to experience it in all its glory and ponder these evolutionary insights that help us make sense of the weirdest plant in the world.is a plant evolutionary biologist at the University of Tennessee. He studies the evolution of plant form and development across deep time.has served as an advocate for science and industry for 180 years, and right now may be the most critical moment in that two-century history.always educates and delights me, and inspires a sense of awe for our vast, beautiful universe. I hope it does that for you, too., you help ensure that our coverage is centered on meaningful research and discovery; that we have the resources to report on the decisions that threaten labs across the U.S.; and that we support both budding and working scientists at a time when the value of science itself too often goes unrecognized.There has never been a more important time for us to stand up and show why science matters. I hope you’ll support us in that mission.
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