Thousands of visitors have flocked to the Adelaide Botanic Gardens to witness the rare blooming of a Titan arum, also known as a corpse flower, which emits a foul odour likened to dead rats, smelly feet, or stinky cheese. The plant, native to Sumatra in Indonesia, blooms only once every few years for about 48 hours, drawing crowds eager to experience its notorious stench.
The Titan arum is an endangered species, with fewer than 1,000 remaining in the wild due to rainforest deforestation for palm oil in Indonesia. In conservation efforts, Indonesia sent seeds to the Adelaide Botanic Gardens, where horticulture curator Matt Coulter has been propagating new plants from leaf cuttings. The plant can grow over 2 metres tall and weigh up to 150kg, though the largest specimen at the gardens reached 2.6 metres and 75kg.
Coulter explained that the plant's smell, which can travel for kilometres, is designed to attract pollinators such as flesh flies, sweat bees, and carrion beetles. The female flowers are active on the first night, while pollen is released on the second, preventing self-pollination. The odour is produced to lure insects that have visited another corpse flower, ensuring cross-pollination.
The blooming event has drawn increasing crowds each time. Visitors queued for hours for a whiff of the miasma, which Coulter described as thick enough to make him gag when the plant was inside the greenhouse. The flower was expected to collapse by Monday afternoon, after which the underground tuber goes dormant for up to a year before re-emerging as a leaf or, once every few years, as another flower.
