Will the Hudson Valley Get its Corpse Flower, Where Will it Go?
When will the Hudson Valley get its own Corpse Flower? If you don't know what it is, that just means you have never smelled one. The smell alone, like rotting flesh, is not one that is easily forgotten.
A Corpse Flower or its Latin name, Amorphophallus titanum, is one of the tallest flowers on the planet. The growing conditions that are needed for them are "very hot" according to one website I was looking at. The New York Botanical Garden did have a Corpse Flower that, well flowered or bloomed in 2018, and because the flowers bloom, on average every two to three years, there is a good chance that we could see or smell another one at the Botanical Garden this year.
The reason I have suddenly become so fascinated with these flowers again is there has been on in California that a gardener simply brought to an Art-Deco Gas Station and people have been flocking to it to see it, take their picture with it and help them all, smell it.
So, thinking to myself, that these flowers take forever to bloom, they grow to be fairly tall and they smell so bad, then they must be expensive, right? There is one nursery online, who will sell me one of these plants and I can have it shipped to my home. The cost? $85 plus shipping. Granted, I do not have nearly the hot enough environment here at my Hudson Valley home to be able to nurture and grow this the way it should be tended to.
How long would it take to flower? Experts I have been reading, say that it takes seven years, on average for the flower to 'bloom.' Then it would be another three years, before I would see a second bloom.
Where can we put these here in the Hudson Valley? One of the malls perhaps? Turn one of the old stores into a green house? How about the old Grand Union/Amish Market in Hyde Park? That building has been empty for years, or maybe even the former Staples across the street from Marist College? Possibly a spot in Orange Plaza in Middletown? Where do you think there should be a Corpse Flower in the Hudson Valley?