Rare flower with ‘rotting flesh smell’ blooms in Australia

The corpse flower blooms for the first time in its 15 years at Canberra’s
Australian National Botanic Gardens.

Monday 10 February 2025 14:49, UK

A rare flower with a pungent odour that has been likened to decaying flesh,
rotten eggs and sewage has bloomed in Australia – the third such flowering in
recent months.

The corpse flower, also known by its scientific name amorphophallus titanum or
titan arum, bloomed for the first time in its 15 years at Canberra’s Australian
National Botanic Gardens on Saturday and was due to close on Monday, staff said.

The flower is called bunga bangkai in its native Indonesia, and is endemic to
the rainforests of western Sumatra. Its pungent scent attracts pollinators such
as flies.

There are thought to be only 300 of the plants in the wild and fewer than 1,000
in total.

It only blooms for a few days every seven to 10 years in its natural habitat –
but another flowered briefly in Sydney at the Royal Botanic Gardens in late
January, attracting 20,000 admirers.

Similar numbers turned out to experience another rancid bloom at the Geelong
Botanic Gardens, southwest of Melbourne, in November.

Canberra’s acting nursery manager Carol Dale said there was no clear explanation
for Australia’s spate of putrid blooms.

A flower is produced when the titan arum has stored enough energy in its
underground tuber, known as a corm.

Ms Dale said: “One of the theories is that a lot of these plants are of a
similar age, so they have just stored up enough carbohydrates in the corm to
finally produce a flower.

“All of the plants around Australia are held in different conditions, so it’s
unusual that they’re all flowering at the same time.”

She said Canberra, Sydney and Geelong each had different climates, and gardeners
used different fertilising regimes on each plant, as well as different
management plans.

Ms Dale said that after 15 years without a bloom, she had decided that Canberra,
which occasionally receives snowfall, was not the place for a corpse plant to
thrive.

“It’s been in our collection for slightly longer than these plants would
normally take to flower for the first time, so we just didn’t think we had the
right conditions here in Canberra,” she said.

“So yes, it did catch us by surprise; a very pleasant one,” she added.

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The flower began opening around lunchtime on Saturday and its odour quickly
deteriorated.

“By Saturday evening, it was incredibly pungent. We could smell it from across
the road. It was definitely gag-worthy,” Ms Dale said.

The crowds attracted to the 135cm (53in) tall flower were limited to hundreds by
a ticketing system because of space constraints within the greenhouse.

Admirers said the stench was similar to dead animals, rotten eggs, sweaty socks,
sewage and rubbish.

But Ms Dale said the worst of the smell had passed by Monday.

“We collected pollen about an hour ago and when you’re right up close to the
plant, it’s still got that rotting flesh smell,” she said.