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After some patient searching, he managed to purchase a dozen
almond-sized seeds from a bloom in Wisconsin. Adding to the mystery
of the flower was that there was not that much solid information
out there about how to care for it. Even with 8,000 feet of greenhouse
space he had built to raise orchids—featuring computer-controlled
temperature and humidity and shades that respond to signals from
a weather station on the roof—Ricciardiello faced a good deal of
trial and error. Some experts said conditions had to perfectly mimic
Sumatra, where the temperature rarely strays from 80 degrees. That
would be prohibitively expensive for Ricciardiello’s oil-heated greenhouses
on cold New Hampshire nights.
“So I picked 65 degrees, and it has worked out OK,” he says, with
typical understatement.
Indeed, from that handful of
seeds he now has 300 plants in
various stages of growth. When
they are not preparing to bloom,
the plants look like trees, with
smooth green trunks and thick
leaves. Some reach to the ceiling of
the greenhouse. As Ricciardiello
walks through the lush grove, a
heavy mist jets from the ceiling,
drenching him like a head of lettuce
in a grocery store produce
section. He doesn’t seem to notice
it or the water he wades through on
the floor. He just cleaned, he says,
but with 90 to 95 percent humidity,
the place will be covered with
algae again in a few days.
Every four or five months, the
treelike foliage dies off, and the
plant looks like little more than a
pot of dirt. But beneath the soil,
the plant’s tuber is working. “During each of these cycles, those
bulbs are getting larger and larger,” he says. “That bulb is storing
energy. And one day, if it has enough energy, it will flower.”
He maintains most of the plants himself, working 20 hours a
week and hand-watering all 300 of his macabre charges. He has a
few men he calls in when he has to move the largest tubers, which
can weigh hundreds of pounds, and their enormous pots, which
can measure four feet in diameter. Ricciardiello shrugs off a treesized
plant that has fallen over, its huge pot spilling soil onto the
floor. It will go dormant again soon, he says, making it easier to
handle.
When a plant decides it is time to flower, it sends up a chimneylike
tube surrounded by what looks like a single petal, called a spathe,
green on the outside and deep crimson inside. “In England, when the
Kew Gardens were first opened up, women were not allowed to view
the flower,” Ricciardiello says. After all, its scientific name translates
roughly to “giant, misshapen penis.”
The first of Ricciardiello’s plants bloomed in 2006. He put it on
display at the town fire station to raise money for local charities,
16 tufts dental medicine fall 2012
A botanical
garden
in beijing
owns two
150-pound
tubers
Ricciardiello
r a i s e d .
“they are
like rock
stars in
China,”
he notes.
including a program that provides reduced-price dental care for those
in need. Some 3,000 people came—half to see it, half just to smell it.
To release the smell, the flower first needs to raise its temperature—one
was documented to reach 96 degrees. That allows it to
volatize the sulfur compounds that produce the nasty odor. The heat
also causes the scent to rise so it can better travel through the rainforest,
attracting those desirable pollinating insects. The bloom lasts
only two or three days.
The fine print is that although the bloom looks like a hibiscus that
a Hawaiian giantess might tuck behind her ear, the plant’s true flowers,
of which there are hundreds, are actually inside the base of the
tube. Still, the corpse flower takes the prize for tallest bloom in the
world, because “all the units work together to accomplish its purpose
of pollination,” Ricciardiello explains.
He knows something about records. In 2010, the Guinness Book
of World Records recognized one of his blooms as the tallest corpse
flower ever recorded, at 10 feet, 2.25 inches.
He’s also been able to clear up a few misconceptions about the