Rare liver-colored flower blooms in N. California

[July 02, 2010]  BERKELEY, Calif. (AP) -- With its putrid smell, liver-colored petals and phallic stamen, a blooming corpse flower is drawing visitors to a botanical garden in Northern California.

The 15-year-old Sumatran plant -- officially called Amorphophallus titanium -- bloomed for the first time Tuesday in Berkeley.

It slowly unfurled its rotten-meat-scented blossom to its full girth: the petals spread 34 inches wide, and the thick central stamen stands nearly four feet tall.

Only a few hundred of the plants exist. Most of them are in gardens like the University of California, Berkeley Botanical Garden, which has about a dozen of the plants.

Unlike other flowers that rely on bees for pollination, this one counts on flies. It attracts them with the smell of rotting flesh, and they in turn spread its sticky pollen.

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Information from: San Francisco Chronicle, http://www.sfgate.com/chronicle/

[Associated Press]

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