Any visitor who has been to the Missouri Botanical Garden to see a corpse flower (Amorphophallus titanum) bloom has likely met Emily Colletti.
Colletti, who has overseen the Garden’s aroid collection for 22 years, has been here for every bloom. When a corpse flower blooms, the Garden usually stays open until midnight to make sure visitors can see, and smell, this massive night-blooming plant. Colletti is known to stay until 2 or 3 a.m. to make sure she gets a chance to talk to each visitor about the plant.
She tells them where it’s from —Sumatra, Indonesia. Colletti informs know it’s endangered, with less than 1,000 left in the wild. She explains the reason for the smell: to attract flies and beetles to pollinate the plant.
To see her passion in action, one would assume the corpse flower is her passion plant, right? Not quite.
“I wouldn’t say corpse flowers aren’t even my favorites,” Colletti said.
So how did she become one of the plant’s greatest cheerleaders?
a Budding botanist
Colletti’s love for plants sprouted in childhood. She grew up in St. Louis, where her mother was a homemaker and her father worked for the Department of Defense. Her dad also had a small rose garden that she started to take over.
“I really didn’t even know I liked plants, I just grew them,” she said.
She moved from roses (Rosa) to Impatiens and snapdragons (Antirrhinum majus). When she started college at the University of Missouri, her brother suggested she sign up for Horticulture. She did and graduated with a Horticulture degree in 1979.
Accidental Aroid Aficionado
A year after graduating, she got a job overseeing the Garden’s aroid collection. But aroids weren’t a family she particularly pursued.
“It was totally by chance,” she said. “I just happened to interview to take the job that took care of those collections.”
The job was mostly behind-the-scenes, taking care of the growing aroid collection. The Garden has one of the largest and most species-diverse collections of aroids in the world. Many of the plants were collected by Garden Scientist Tom Croat.
Colletti left the position when her oldest daughter was born to stay home to raise her family. She continued to visit the Garden with her family, which grew to include a set of twins. She kept in touch with some Garden colleagues, too. As her kids grew older, she started asking if the aroid position was open. On her daughter’s last day of high school, she accepted the job for the second time.
It wasn’t specifically a love of aroids that brought her back, she said, but a love of the job. And of course, she had the expertise that came with it.
“It just becomes a part of you,” she said.
Coming Home
Even with an 18-year gap, Colletti said it felt like she never left.
“It was just like going to sleep one night and waking up and coming back to work the next day,” she said.
There were of course technical changes. The Garden recorded data online now rather than on physical cards. And there was a rising smelly star—Amorphophallus titanum. The plant is also called the titan arum, or simply “the corpse flower.”
In the early 2000s, botanical gardens and universities around the world started reporting corpse flower blooms. The number of blooms in cultivation was still so low, however, that the institution would announce what number bloom it was.
Colletti said the Garden had a couple of titan arum tubers in its collection during her first tenure. But they were essentially in storage. When she returned, there was a push to add the Garden’s name to the list of institutions with a successful bloom.
At first, she didn’t get the fascination.
“I couldn’t understand why everyone was making such a big deal about it,” she said.
Joining the reek Race
Eventually, Colletti bought into the corpse flower mania. She was engrossed in finding out what it took to get the large, otherworldly plants to bloom.
A colleague at another institution told her the titan arum liked conditions “wet and wetter.” She watered a lot, and the tubers rotted. She switched techniques to have more drainage.
Finally, in 2012, the Garden had its first corpse flower bloom, Tommy.
“It was pretty incredible,” she said.
Many of her colleagues on the Horticulture team had been following the journey and came to celebrate. They took photos with the nearly 5-foot tall plant with an infrared camera.
A month later, the Garden had another bloom. This one was named Izzy. The Garden then fell into a pattern of producing corpse flower blooms once a year, sometimes more.
Colletti had cracked the corpse flower puzzle.
What’s in a name? Each of the Garden’s corpse flower has a fun, affectionate name. Some are named for colleagues or loved ones. Tommy was named for Researcher Tom Croat. Izzy was named for Colletti’s grandmother who loved to garden. Jack, the Garden’s third bloom, honored Colletti’s father shortly after he passed away. Other names are chosen more numerically. Octavia was the Garden’s eighth bloom. Luna was its 12th, a nod to the 12 lunar cycles.
Unfurling the mystery
Now, Colletti is one of the world’s leading experts on titan arums. She loves to talk to her fellow corpse flower growers to share knowledge. And, perhaps most of all, she loves to share that knowledge with the public.
“I can show them something that grows in the wild – literally on the other side of the world – that is so unusual and they wouldn’t normally be able to see,” she said.
She asks visitors what they find so fascinating about the plant.
“Everyone says it’s so unusual, it’s such a weird plant, everything about it,” she said. “It’s the sheer size of its leaf. The sheer size of its inflorescence. It blooms at night. The smell. It’s all of that put together.”
What’s the attraction for Colletti after all the years? Unfolding its mysteries.
At the beginning of the corpse flower craze, everyone said the plants only bloomed every 10 years. Colletti now knows at the Garden after a first bloom, a titan arum will bloom every other life cycle. She can tell when a plant is going to split and create a clone. She can accurately predict a window for the bloom time. And she keeps learning.
Growing Knowledge
Learning by growing is one Colletti’s favorite parts of the job.
“You can read all you want to read about a plant, you can find out all the things in the wild that the plant grows in or is native to…but when you grow a plant in a pot, it’s very different than growing it in the wild,” she said.
The Garden’s expansive collection of aroids, including many rare species not found in other collections, have given many opportunities to keep learning. And to become a world expert.
“Throughout Emily’s tenure at the Missouri Botanical Garden, she has become a world renowned horticulturist and aroid specialist,” said Derek Lyle, Senior Nursery Manager.
“Her dedication and efforts continue to support the cultivation and conservation of the Araceae family. Emily continually strives to share her knowledge along with productively collaborating with other Aroid professionals. Without Emily, one of the most unique and largest ex situ collections of Aroids in the world would not be as distinguished as it is today.”
Catherine Martin | Sr. Public Information Officer
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