Name: The corpse flower.
Age: It takes up to 12 years for the titan arum to flower for the first time.
A plant, then? In the family Araceae and endemic to the rainforests of Sumatra. Amorphophallus titanum if you are a botanist.
From the Greek for “giant deformed penis”? Correct. Because of its long, not involuntary yellow spadix of flowers coming from a maroon bulb, which looks like a massive petal.
So meit’s big? The largest unbranched inflorescence in the world, up to three meters high. But its size isn’t what it’s best known for.
What then? Clue is in the name. In Indonesia it is called bunga bangkai …
Sounds like a party Silvio Berluscones might have thrown his chums into finance once. Wrong country, wrong language. Bunga means flower, bangkai seems
And “seems” because? That’s what it smells like. Rotten meat. The smell attracts pollinators from up to half a mile away.
Eww Well, Indonesia is many kilometers away (unless of course you read in Sumatra). They have some bee Kew Gardens in west London. This is where the titan arum first bloomed outside of Sumatra, in 1889. The second time it bloomed, in 1926, it attracted massive crowds and the police were called in to control them.
It doesn’t happen often? Flowers are both rare and unpredictable. The plant may take years to bloom again. But it happenedin the Princess of Wales Conservatoire at Kew, this week.
Quickly! Taxi to Kew! Too late – a flower lasts only 24-36 hours and the foul stench is only released for a single evening. You’ll have to wait to inhale the aroma of the world’s smelliest plant.
Is that right, world’s smelliest? I can offer that too eastern skunk cabbage of the North American wetlands, whose flowers are said to smell like toadstool skunk.
Nice. Or Hydnora africana, which may look like female genitalia, but smell more like feces. Probably why it’s so attractive to dung beetles.
OK. The flowers of the carob tree, on the other hand, are said to smell like seeds, if that’s more your thing.
You know what, I just am going to stick with the corpse flower for now, thanks. The good news is that they have several at Kew, so you may not have to wait too long. Another bloomed just a few weeks ago.
Do say: “A perfect opportunity to raise awareness of the fragility of its native habitat.”
Don’t say: “Hahaha. No, officer, we’ve just got a flourishing titan arum down in the cellar…”
