Corpse Flower: Annie Dubrovskaya's journal

Freshman conservatory volunteer Annie Dubrovskaya was given the honor of naming the new corpse flower "Tabatha." (Debbie Aldridge/UC Davis photo)

Annie Dubrovskaya depends on scientific curiousity

(Editor's note: Annie Dubrovskaya will be one of two students keeping an eye on the plant's progress and reporting their findings to this site.

Davis, July 21 -- My name is Annie Dubrovskaya, and I work as a volunteer at the UC Davis Botanical Conservatory. I work with a great variety of plants and see them at various stages of development.  Little plants have grown big during the summer and need repotting and pruning, and seeds need to be collected from ripe fruits and stored for later research. 

But all that is small news compared to Tabatha! Excitement is rising about the corpse flower (Amorphophallus titanum) due to bloom at the beginning of August.  I will be telling you about that event, the science and the people as the flower blooms.

My volunteer experience at the conservatory relates to my major: molecular biology/biotechnology. I graduated from Davis Senior High School this June and am going to UC Davis this fall as a freshman.  Throughout high school I focused primarily on science. A field biology class that included scuba diving off Catalina Island, a crystallography internship at Briggs Hall, and numerous plant and insect collections have developed my scientific curiosity. 

Grafting cacti and digging trenches

Now I explore the UC Davis greenhouses, help replant overgrown specimens and graft my own cacti! A whole load of plant work needs to be done at the greenhouses and around the UC Davis campus.  Trenches need to be dug outside the greenhouses to prep soil for various plants like cycads that have overgrown their pots in the greenhouses and need more room. 

Greenhouse plants need pruning, and with my newfound skills, I can now successfully manage a small army of bonsai.  Plants require a clean surrounding and are kept so on a daily basis. Although sometimes temperatures in the greenhouses rise and the humidity is unbearable, the work is fun and time flies by in a hurry.  

Researchers rely on me

I also assist in the ongoing lab experiments throughout the greenhouse.  Cuttings treated with hormones and plants with various watering cycles depend on me when their researchers are gone. Repotting some of the larger specimens sometimes require up to two people to make sure the plants are even and straight. All these ongoing experiments intrigue me and bring back all I have learned in biology and biotechnology classes, only on a bigger level than cells and bacteria. 

I learn more and more each day about the different cares of exotic plants.  Some need more water than others and, for a few of the plants‚ roots can rot if overexposure occurs. 

Orchids are stuffed with packing pellets to assist oxygen flow through their root systems.  A whole room is dedicated to the carnivorous plants, such as the Venus flytraps, and is infested with a swarm of gnats for their dining pleasure. 

And that pleasant dumpster smell…

Persian carpet flowers (Edithcolea) propagate by cuttings and are constantly flowering and smelling up the succulent rooms. Such a pleasant smell can only be found near a dumpster!  Fern leaves are placed in envelopes to remove their spores for collection.

New revelations follow me home every day, and I employ them with the plants my family grows.