The Stench of Summertime: A Reborn Corpse Flower Blooms on Campus
A few days after Commencement, Cal Poly Plant Conservatory Curator Gage Willey was watering plants in the lowland rainforest section when he noticed a two-foot-tall spadix shooting out of one of the pots: a telltale sign of an upcoming corpse flower bloom.
“Usually we get about three weeks of warning, but this one snuck up on me,” Willey said. A little over a week later, Sneaky was in full bloom and receiving a steady stream of visitors. And even more special: Sneaky is the first of its kind to bloom in the Cal Poly Plant Conservatory.
The blooms of the massive titan arum are very rare and don’t tend to last that long. Sneaky started blooming on June 25, and Willey predicted that the bloom would begin to die by the evening of June 26.
Time was definitely of the essence for two of Sneaky’s visitors. Second-year plant science student Katarina Cervantes and her grandmother, Guadalupe Ogas, drove from Monterey County to see it.
“I was scared it would die before I got here!” Cervantes told Willey on Thursday afternoon.
“I saw a post about it on Instagram, and I was like, ‘Oh my God, we have to go,’” Cervantes said. Bonded by a love of plants — and fueled by the desire to see something neither of them had seen before — the pair started driving to San Luis Obispo less than 24 hours after news of the bloom was announced.
“I grew up in agriculture, and plants are my life,” Ogas said, adding that Cervantes has given her a tour of the Plant Conservatory before, and shares regular updates on what she learns in her classes.
“It was well worth the trip,” Ogas told Willey, grinning as she walked out of the conservatory with her granddaughter.
Despite the once-in-a-lifetime feel of catching a corpse flower bloom, Cal Poly has been home to them nearly every year since 2020.
That year, 3,000 people came out to see and smell the six-year-old Musty. The streak continued the following summer with 18-year-old Bertha. Finally, in 2022, the seven-year-old Mustito — a sibling of Musty — put on its own aromatic show.
Sneaky already belongs to this lineup because it was previously known as Bertha, the plant that bloomed in 2021. Bertha and Sneaky are considered to be the same plant because Sneaky was grown from parts of Bertha that were replanted after the 2021 bloom, said Plant Conservatory Director Matt Ritter.
“I planted this one in 2003 with seeds from UC Santa Barbara,” Ritter said. “It took 18 years for it to bloom in 2021, and then it snuck right up on us this year.”
Why so many corpse flower blooms at Cal Poly in the last few years? Ritter says the climate control in the Cal Poly Plant Conservatory buildings might have something to do with it.
“We moved these plants into this lowland tropical environment, where they grow so well and so fast, that it’s encouraging them to bloom.”
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