Gardens go to great lengths to care for these charismatic companions. The corpse flower is one of several “exceptional plants,” a designation given to species whose seeds cannot be effectively conserved in seed banks. In the corpse flower’s case, its seeds are no longer viable after drying, which is a necessary step for long-term seed storage. Instead, corpse flowers and other exceptional plants are conserved in “living collections” within research facilities, botanic gardens and arboreta.
Because male and female corpse flowers bloom at different times, the flowers in these living collections rely on humans to keep their lineages alive. Their caretakers, however, face several challenges.
“The female flowers open first, and then the male flowers open later,” Murrell said. “So, the female flowers are no longer viable by the time pollen is produced. The plant also blooms rarely and unpredictably. It could go seven to 10 years without blooming. Then, when the blooms do open, the female flowers are only viable for a couple hours. With that limited time to pollinate, conservationists scramble to use whatever they have on hand. That might be pollen from a previous flower on the same individual, which results in inbreeding.”
**Wilted records**
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To better understand what happens in these situations, Murrell located all the living collections around the world which contained corpse flowers. Ultimately, she received data from nearly 1,200 individual plants from 111 institutions across North America, Asia, Australia and Europe. The data arrived in the forms of handwritten notes, prose, lists and spreadsheets.
Ideally, a plant’s records should contain detailed information about its origin, parents, characteristics, health and propagation. Crucial for conservation efforts, these data help conservationists maintain genetic diversity and plant health while preventing loss. Without this information, people cannot make informed decisions about which plants to cross for breeding.
After organizing all the information received from institutions, Murrell found it was severely lacking. Institutions often did not record the sources and origins of individual plants. Even when they did record seed sources, they did not record information about which plant’s pollen was used for breeding.
“The highest rate of missing data occurred when plants were transferred to new locations,” Murrell said. “The plants moved, but their data didn’t move with them. So, records easily got lost over time as plants moved around.”
**Clones and crosses**
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To determine prevalence of inbreeding, Murrell and her team examined the records for clones and breeding between related plants. Of the 1,188 individual plants in the dataset, 287 (24%) were clones and 27% were offspring from closely related individuals. Fewer than one-third of crosses occurred between unrelated individuals.
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If nothing changes, it could inbreed itself into extinction.”
Olivia Murrell
Looking to substantiate these conclusions, Murrell performed a small molecular genetics study on 65 plants. By sequencing the plants’ DNA, the team confirmed low genetic diversity and high inbreeding across all collections.
Native only to Sumatra, the corpse flowers’ numbers continue to decline. According to a recent estimate published in the journal Biodiversity and Conservation, just 162 individual corpse flowers remain in the wild. The dwindling population underscores the need to ensure these plants can thrive in living collections, so they eventually can be reintroduced into the wild.
“The population needs variation to survive,” Murrell said. “If nothing changes, it could inbreed itself into extinction. That’s why it’s really important to keep consistent, standardized and centralized data. Not keeping data has clear conservation implications. In the meantime, our study provides valuable information about relationships among existing collections, which can be used to determine which crosses might be most successful.”
To help improve collections of corpse flowers and other species, Murrell and her coauthors made five recommendations. They urged institutions to (1) document parents and destinations of plants sampled in the wild, (2) standardize data across collections, (3) track parent plants across institutions, (4) transfer data with plants when they are moved to new institutions and (5) determine common language for recordkeeping so all definitions are consistent.