Phwoar! What’s that smell? Before you check the fridge for expired meat, rest assured it’s Canberra’s own corpse flower (Amorphophallus titanium) at the Australian National Botanic Garden and it will only be in flower for the next 24 hours – but don’t rush down now, it’s a free limited ticketed event (almost sold out) and it’s unsure whether it will still be in bloom tomorrow.
Apologies for the short notice but plants are dreadful communicators and – after 15 years of growing in the gardens’ tropical glasshouse – it didn’t think to let staff know it was going to flower last night.
There’s less than 1,000 left in the wild so Canberra’s botanic gardens are part of a global effort to save the species from the brink of extinction.
It’s taken Canberra’s Corpse flower (which is native to Indonesia) 15 years to finally reach maturity and bloom today, but it’s anyone’s guess when it will flower again. Staff say it could bloom again in two years’ time or it could be in five to seven years – the answer (and stench) is blowing in the wind.
Acting nursery manager Carol Dale said the public’s fascination with the Corpse flower was due to the fact that “it’s pretty gross, it’s unusual, it’s different”.
“Everyone wants to see it and smell it to see what it’s really like, to see if it really does smell that bad,” she said. “Last night it was very intense, there were a lot of flies around because of the strong smell’s designed to attract pollinators from kilometres away, up to about 5km away. When we opened the glasshouse this morning it was very ripe.”
Click here to get a free ticket.
