Eli5: How do flowers that bloom once every 40 or 50 years exist?

Question

Like, the corpse flower which blooms every 40 years. Or the baobab tree which blooms every 50 years. Why aren’t they extinct?

In: Biology

Answer 1

They’re not extinct because they don’t reproduce that often. Reproduction requires a great deal of energy. Think of baobab tree’s habitat, pretty dry and barren. It doesn’t often have the energy to create new babies.

Also, it couldn’t survive if there was a ton of baobab trees around it, taking what little resources are available. Those trees live to be 3,000 years old, so it doesn’t need to reproduce every year unlike a plant that only live 4-5 years.