Stinky “Corpse Flower” Draws Huge Crowd in Australia
Thursday, December 31st, 2015December 31, 2015
This week, thousands of visitors flocked to the Mount Lofty Botanic Garden in Crafers, South Australia (near Adelaide), to experience a rare, unpleasant phenomenon. For 10 years, the garden has been growing a titan arum—a large, flowering plant known for producing a vile odor that has been likened to that of rotting fish. Because of this stench, which attracts insects to pollinate the plant’s flowers, the titan arum is sometimes called a carrion flower or corpse flower. The 6.5-foot (2-meter) plant, named Indah, began opening for the first time on Monday.
The titan arum is native to the Indonesian island of Sumatra. It grows from a bulblike underground stem that can weigh more than 200 pounds (90 kilograms). After many years of growth, the plant is ready to flower. At that time, it grows a single large spike enclosed in a structure known as a spathe. Eventually, the spathe unfolds and opens, forming a purple-red skirt around the base of the plant. A large stalk called the spadix rises from the open spathe. Pink to red female flowers ring the bottom of the spadix. Yellowish-white male flowers grow just above the female flowers.
The spike usually remains open for only a few days. During this time, the plant produces its legendary odor to attract pollinating insects that normally feed on rotting flesh and animal waste. After the plant blooms, the spadix collapses and the spathe falls off. The plant then restarts its cycle, lying dormant for years before blooming again.
Many botanic gardens around the world grow titan arum plants. Visitors flock to the gardens to see and smell the plants when they bloom. In July of this year, a specimen named Tiny drew visitors to the Cambridge University Botanic Garden in Cambridge, England. In September, thousands of people flocked to the Chicago Botanic Garden in Glencoe, Illinois, to experience the sights and smells of a titan arum named Alice.
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