Research on the corpse flower sounds like a bad joke: What do carrion flies and chemical ecologists have in common? They are both attracted by the smell of rotting flesh.
Unlike carrion flies, however, chemical ecologist Ken Keefover-Ring is not interested in finding a tasty meal at the end of the scent trail—he is more interested in the scent itself.
Keefover-Ring is a postdoctoral scholar, having received both his masters and Ph.D. from the University of Colorado-Boulder. His Ph.D. work involved studying the chemicals that give plants their aroma, specifically the volatiles from thyme plants in southern France. Volatiles are the chemical compounds found in plants that produce their aromas.
""So, through this work I became very interested in plant volatiles and floral scents,"" Keefover-Ring said. ""When I saw that the Titan arum was going to bloom, I couldn't resist setting up my equipment to collect the scent.""
To collect scent samples, Keefover-Ring usually wraps the plant in plastic bagging material, such as Reynolds Oven Bags, to make sure he captures enough of the scant scent.
""This technique is really important if volatiles are being released in low amounts, but this was obviously not the case with this flower,"" Keefover-Ring said. ""I have yet to analyze the samples, but it is clear by the smell that I collected plenty of the compounds.""
Once the scent is collected, Keefover-Ring will bring it to a lab and put a sample into a gas chromatograph, which uses a tube and oven to electronically separate and identify different compounds in a bouquet.
""[It is] easy to think of most flowers using the word bouquet, but a little hard with this stinky one,"" Keefover-Ring said.
The sulfur-like stench of the corpse flower, also called the Bunga Bangkai or Titan arum, is its claim to fame and the reason for so many curious visitors at the D.C. Smith Greenhouse on Bascom Avenue last week.
""We are able to smell sulfur compounds in very low amounts, which probably evolved to keep us from being poisoned by rotten food. Keefover-Ring said, ""The earlier hominids that could smell rotten meat lived better and went on to reproduce.""
Producing this strong, unique odor is very costly to the plant. The heavy sulfur-based compounds do not become airborne easily, so the corpse flower must heat itself up to volatilize and spread its ""perfume."" While in bloom, the tip of the spadix (the central spike) is about human body temperature.
The corpse flower's odor is strongest at night, and used to attract the pollinators of its native Sumatra, Indonesia: carrion beetles and flesh flies. Because of the enormous amount of energy this plant expends attracting pollinators, it only blooms once every few years and only for a few days. With blooms so rare, a chance to analyze the scent compounds is an exciting opportunity for researchers like Keefover-Ring.
""[It is] funny that we don't think much about the nice-smelling chemicals that attract bees or butterflies, but a really nasty-smelling plant that attracts carrion flies as pollinators gets a lot of attention,"" Keefover-Ring said. ""I guess it should because it is pretty cool. [It is] just a slightly different solution to the same problem of getting your genes out there.
