Enlarge image
Take a deep breath, please: the titan arum is also called corpse flower - with good reason
Photo: MATT TURNER/EPA
It's a rare spectacle, and a brief one at that: it's only every few years that a titan arum blooms, and then only for 48 hours.
What is special, however, is not so much the absolutely magnificent flower, but the unique aroma that emanates from the plant - and which has given it a programmatic nickname: corpse flower.
Their characteristic floral scent is compared to the smell of dead rats, and sweaty feet and overripe cheese are also used as descriptions.
The stench lingers for miles, serving as an lure for the plant to attract flesh flies, sweat bees and carrion beetles — potential pollinators that have already wallowed in the pollen of other corpse flowers.
And apparently the Titan Arum does not only attract insects: the olfactory spectacle has now brought a rush of visitors to the Adelaide Botanical Gardens.
Thousands of people queued for hours to catch a whiff of the intoxicating stench of a blooming corpse flower.
Who knows when we'll get that opportunity again.
The Titan Arum is threatened with extinction.
Native to Sumatra, Indonesia, it looks like a single flower but is actually an inflorescence — a bunch of flowers on a stalk.
It can grow to be more than two meters tall and weigh up to 150 kilograms.
And then there's that acrid smell.
Matt Coulter, horticultural curator of plant propagation at the Adelaide Botanic Gardens, told the Guardian he gagged as the plant bloomed in the greenhouse.
Deforestation of Indonesia's rainforest for palm oil has resulted in the number of corpse flowers in the wild falling to fewer than 1,000.
In 2018 it was classified as endangered.
In an effort to conserve the species, Indonesia has sent seeds to the botanical gardens.
Coulter has now begun propagating more plants from leaf cuttings.
With every flowering season, more people come to experience the olfactory spectacle, he told the Guardian: "It's the most incredible plant in the world."
The current boom is already coming to an end, Coulter continued.
"It will be gone by the afternoon," the botanist said on Monday.
“The whole structure will then collapse within about a week.” After that, the tuber goes into a kind of dormant state underground for up to a year before it develops its first leaf again – and then a few years later its full bloom and stinking power unfold.
czl
