A rare bloom with a pungent odor like decaying flesh has opened in the Australian capital in the nation’s third such extraordinary flowering in as many months, the AP reports. The corpse flower, also known by its scientific name, amorphophallus titanium, bloomed for the first time in its 15 years at Canberra’s Australian National Botanic Gardens on Saturday and was closing on Monday, staff said. Another flowered briefly in the Sydney 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.
The corpse flower or corpse plant, known as bunga bangkai in its native Indonesia, is endemic to the rainforests of western Sumatra. It only blooms for a few days every 7 to 10 years in its natural habitat. Its rancid scent attracts pollinators such as flies. Admirers in Canberra likened the stench to a range of dead animals, rotten eggs, sweaty socks, sewage, and garbage. There are thought to be only 300 of the plants in the wild and fewer than 1,000 including those in cultivation.
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 plant has stored enough energy in its underground tuber known as a corm. “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,” Dale said. “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 added. She said Canberra, Sydney, and Geelong had different climates and gardeners used different fertilizing regimes on each plant and different management plans.
(More corpse flower stories.)
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