In Geelong, just south of Melbourne, thousands of people are queuing up for a rare chance to see and smell the notorious “corpse flower,” also known as Amorphophallus titanum.
“It’s rank,” one visitor said, gagging through his hand, while another described the smell as “like a dead possum.”
The corpse flower is infamous for the putrid odor it emits when it blooms, designed to attract pollinators such as beetles and flies. The bloom is rare, often occurring just once every decade, and lasts only 24 to 48 hours. This short lifespan makes it a highly anticipated event, drawing huge crowds to the Geelong Botanic Gardens.
Gifted to the garden in 2021 by the State Herbarium in Adelaide, this particular plant has been closely monitored by horticulturalists. On November 11, after days of anticipation, the flower began to bloom, attracting around 5,000 visitors on the first day alone, according to Geelong Parks Manager Reese McIlvena. So far, people have likened the smell to a dead mouse or a stinky pond.
For those unable to attend in person, the garden is offering a live stream of the flower, which has already garnered tens of thousands of views from around the world.
Some visitors have returned several times to observe the flower’s various stages of bloom, including the unfurling of the frilly leaf at its base, which eventually closes around the tall, yellow spadix at the center.
City of Greater Geelong CEO Ali Wastie highlighted the importance of botanic gardens in preserving rare plant species. “The endangered Titan Arum is the largest carrion flower, and its conservation is vital as its wild population declines,” she said.
Native to Indonesia, the corpse flower is listed as endangered by the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN). Its natural habitat, the Sumatran forest, has been heavily impacted by land degradation and deforestation, largely due to the expansion of timber, paper, and oil palm plantations.
The plant, which can live for up to 40 years, blooms only a handful of times in its lifetime. The IUCN estimates that only a few hundred of these plants remain in the wild. Protected by Indonesian law, the species is cultivated in botanic gardens worldwide, including one in California, where the public named it “Darth Vapor.”
Related topics: