Roseville was the 1st high school to grow a rare corpse flower. They did it again
The rotting corpse flower’s putrid stench cast a spell Thursday across Roseville High School’s campus. The rare bloom hexed horticulture lovers to stop daily errands and teachers to pause lessons, all to bask in its striking colors.
A yellow cylindrical protrusion sprouted from a dark maroon spathe — or a petal-like sheath — inside a greenhouse maintained by a student club. The students documented its growth online and barely contained their excitement when their efforts paid off, said Jeffrey Underwood, a science coordinator at Roseville High School.
“It’s like a core memory,” Underwood said in an interview Friday.
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Gene Domek, a Roseville teacher, about 20 years ago, conjured up an idea for a greenhouse and sowed seeds for the Titan Arum. The first bloom happened July 2011 and cemented Roseville High School as the first public high school in the world to nurture a successful bloom, according to The Sacramento Bee’s archives.
Thursday’s growth marked just the fourth instance of the flower’s bloom at Roseville High School. Native to Indonesia, the flower closed its spathe Friday and its yellow spadix will fall off, Underwood said.
There are less than 1,000 corpse flowers in the wild, according to the United States Botanic Garden.
The key to Thursday’s bloom, Underwood theorized, perhaps came as students shrouded the flower in black to allow its circadian rhythm to naturally appear.
The school buzzed with activity as residents came to witness the flower, Underwood said. But the teacher said he keeps his students’ experience at the center of all his work.
He hoped his pupils remember these lessons, remember them in the future and learn science is cool.
This story was originally published October 31, 2025 at 3:33 PM.
