The Highest Bangkai Flower Blooms During The Third Week At The Cibodas Botanical Gardens, Towering A Capai Of 3.5 Meters

The giant carcass flower in the Cibodas Botanical Gardens, Cianjur, West Java, is expected to bloom at the end of April, so that it can be an attraction for tourists. (ANTARA/Ahmad Fikri). (Ahmad Fikri)

CIANJUR - Kebun Raya Cibodas (KRC) in Cipanas District, Cianjur, West Java, recorded a giant corpse flower (Amorphophallus Titanum) which is the world's highest type of flower to bloom in the third week of April with a height of 3.5 meters. The Coordinator of Function and Public Relations of the BRIN KRC, Winarni said, currently the flower buds of giant carcasses as high as 2.28 meters can still increase when they bloom perfectly, where every day they increase by 20 centimeters. “ When it will bloom as it is today, it will increase as high as 10 centimeters in a day, so that it is estimated that when it blooms, it reaches more than 3.5 meters, ” he said in Cianjur, Antara, Thursday, April 18. The formation of a giant corpse flower in just two days before finally returning to sleep or dorman. Giant carcass flower is very sensitive, when someone touches the shoots it can speed up the bloom and enter the bangrman phase immediately. Including when extreme or unfavorable weather can shorten its bloom period, so that it forms a special research team from BRIN to closely monitor the growth of tubai flowers, including cleaning tree branches and leaves that can disrupt the bloom of corpse flowers. "The carcass flower that will bloom is a descendant of the parent tuber who was brought from Kerinci Seblat National Park (TNKS), Jambi, where currently at the KRC there are 10 children who have been successfully cultivated," he said. While the mother has been planted at the KRC since 2000 and has been brought in the form of tubers, it has become the world's highest corpse flower in 2020 and no one has beat its record to date where its height reaches more than 4 meters. "The giant corpse flower industry has shown its shoots, rising from behind the leaves about five centimeters, our hope is to enter a generative phase or flowering period, so that it can become the highest corpse flower that blooms in the world," he said. Director of the Cibodas Botanical Gardens, Marga Angriyanto, said that with the bloom of a giant carcass flower at the end of April, it would be an attraction for tourists who come to the KRC, in accordance with its function as an object of conservation tourism, research, tourism, education, and environmental services. In the near future, his party will even open a park for nephentes or insect-eating plant parks from Indonesia and abroad, so that there is a new location for tourists to enjoy holidays while studying plants.

"Every corpse flower blooms at the KRC, the number of visits reaches thousands of people, hopefully with the bloom of a giant corpse flower at the end of this month can attract even higher tourists," he said.