Corpse flowers, ethereal and otherworldly, bloom in Alabama's woods

Ben Raines By Ben Raines Press-Register
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on November 12, 2012 at 3:57 PM, updated November 13, 2012 at 9:23 AM
IMG_1990.JPG Corpse flowers emerge in the darkest parts of the forest, places the sun seldom reaches, and places they have little competition from more vigorous plants. Lacking chlorophyll, they mine energy from fungi growing around tree roots. (Ben Raines/

As fall begins to undo all the work of spring and summer, a new flower, phantasmagoric and rare, emerges in the depths of the darkest woods.

Pale, almost translucent, the corpse flowers emerge from the forest floor in groups of two or three. They are small, typically but a few inches high, and appear to be made of wax. When they first emerge, the flowers hang down toward the ground, as if they are nodding. Overall, they call to mind fairies and magical creatures.

The petals and leaves range from silvery white to the faintest pink. The one color you never seen anywhere on the plant is green.

Also known as ghost plants and ice flowers, the plants have none of the green chlorophyll that courses through the veins of almost every other plant growing on Earth. Plants use the chlorophyll in their leaves to turn sunlight into glucose, which fuels the plant.

How corpse flowers were able to grow on the forest floor, even in places that never saw the light of day, remained a mystery for centuries.

In the 1840s, scientists believed the plants were parasites sucking their lifeblood from living trees. Over the years, other theories emerged, with some scientists concluding the plants were somehow attaining sustenance from decaying organic matter, a trick common to fungi, but not flowering plants. But whenever the plants were transplanted from the forest to a pot rich in organic matter, they’d croak.

The riddle was finally solved in the 1960s by a Swedish biologist at the Royal School of Forestry in Stockholm. He injected trees with radioactive materials, and then traced the radioactivity as it moved into fungi living amongst the trees roots. The radioactivity then moved through the fungi and into the corpse flowers.

In essence, the corpse flowers are borrowing the glucose created by the trees by siphoning it away from the fungi.

The delicate and ethereal flowers have emerged in Alabama woods in the last few weeks. Look for them in places with a thick canopy above and few green plants growing close to the ground. Though they are few and far between, when you find one, you’ll often find several more growing within 20 or 30 feet.