The marvel from Sumatra
2022; Wiley; Volume: 20; Issue: 3 Linguagem: Inglês
10.1002/fee.2494
ISSN1540-9309
Autores Tópico(s)Medicinal Plant Research
ResumoEverything about the giant arum (Amorphophallus titanum; Figure 1) is fantastic! First, it’s huge. When it flowers it looks like an enormous, meat-red cupcake with a huge misshapen birthday candle sticking out of it. The circumference of the spathe (the cupcake paper) might easily require three grown men with arms outstretched to encompass it, and one of those men might need to stand on the shoulders of another to reach the top of the spadix (the birthday candle). And all this atop a huge corm (pedestal cake stand); in the Royal Botanic Garden in Edinburgh (Scotland) one reached a massive 153.95 kg! And when the plant is neither flowering nor dormant, the corm sprouts a tree-like structure perhaps climbing 6 m into the air to produce a “crown” 5–7 m in diameter. Yet technically it is all only a single modified leaf! Little wonder that the paper in which a letter from Italian botanist Odoardo Beccari first described the species was entitled Una Pianta Maravigliosa (“A Wonderful Plant”; Bull Soc Toscan di Ortic 1878; 270–71). That title, however, may have been very different had this letter been written by someone from the plant’s native Sumatra… A captive bunga bangkai in Washington, DC. US Botanic Garden (CC BY 2.0) Now, most folks do seem to agree that the plant is a marvel. Why else would 16,000 people line up over four rainy days to see one in bloom (the inflorescence is short-lived, and years pass between flowerings) at the Bonn University Botanic Gardens (Germany)? Why else would 10,000 people similarly cram into the Adelaide Botanic Garden (Australia), or wait hours to enter the University of Warsaw Botanic Garden (Poland), to see one in flower? And why would 1200 inhabitants of Alameda (California) pull into an abandoned gas station to touch one displayed by a green-fingered nursery owner? Indeed, ever since its first blooming outside Sumatra in London’s Royal Botanic Gardens at Kew in 1889, such events have attracted huge crowds, despite the flower stinking of rotting flesh (an irresistible lure to the cadaver-loving beetles and flies it tricks into pollinating it). Chemists thought the stench so intriguing they just had to identify its constituent compounds (dimethyl tri- and disulfides, trimethylamine, methyl thioacetate, and isovaleric acid), and botanists and biochemists can’t resist telling you how the spadix produces heat pulses to get the odor airborne! But many people in rural Sumatra take a different view of this plant that, among other monikers, goes by the name bunga bangkai: the corpse flower. Little has been written on the thoughts of the inhabitants where the plant grows naturally, making the information shared with me by A titanum expert Yuzammi of the Center for Plant Conservation at the Bogor Botanic Gardens (Indonesian Institute of Sciences; Bogor, Indonesia) so valuable. “Many people, including my relatives in Sumatra, believe that a person can be swallowed up by the plant”, she told me. “Most parents do not allow their children to come too close, and the cadaver-like smell only strengthens the idea that a child has fallen in. Sadly, people usually destroy the plant if they find it growing on their land. Local people may also believe it is dangerous because the petiole has patterns that resemble those of a snake. Some also say the plant’s markings resemble a skin disease [caused by the fungus Tinea versicolor] that they could catch, so they may also destroy it. Some people in Kepahiang Regency think better of the plant, believing the petiole to contain a ‘sacred stone’ that cures disease, although unfortunately the plant is destroyed if they try to obtain it. Although I have never heard of local people using the plant for food, a man I met in a village in West Sumatra told me that somebody requested the tubers be sent overseas [illegally] for making crackers” (see also Biotropia 2018; 25: 56–63). But such local beliefs may carry little blame for the (perhaps) fewer than 1000 A titanum now remaining in the wild. In his 1885 A Naturalist’s Wanderings in the Eastern Archipelago (New York, NY: Harper and Brothers), Henry Ogg Forbes wrote: “Here I was gratified to find abundance of the great Arums, Amorphophallus titanum…with tubers of a greater size than any I had seen before” – and people lived in rural Sumatra then too. No, the major culprits are forest-clearing for palm oil plantations and the like, the accompanying decline in macaques and hornbills that disperse its seeds, and illegal collecting. Indeed, Indonesian researchers have now provided photographic evidence of corms piled up for sale, as the large quantities of glucomannan (best known as a cooking supplement in Japanese soups and stews) they contain give them nutritive value (Warta Kebun Raya 2021; 19: 23–29). Not all is lost, however. Attempts are being made worldwide to propagate the plant, which is now a conservation flagship species in Indonesia, and younger generations of locals are embracing the ecotourism opportunities it offers. Because even though it might gobble you up, this plant really is maravigliosa! Adrian Burton
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