Australians in Sydney have rushed to the Royal Botanic Garden to witness the first blooming of ‘corpse flower’ (Amorphophallus titanum) for the first time in 15 years.
Reports on 24 January say that more than 20,000 have gathered at the garden to witness the historic blooming of this plant, many of which were not born when the plant bloomed last.
About the ‘corpse flower’
There are two striking things about this plant —- the name ‘corpse flower’ and the fact that it blooms only once in about ten years.
It is called ‘corpse flower’ because of its unique smell, which resembles that of a dead and rotten animal. Like with any other plant, the unique smell is meant to attract a unique kind of insect that helps to facilitate its pollination.
In Sydney, this one is named Putricia, which is a combination of the female name Patricia, and the putrid smell it emits. Botanists at the garden will try to hand-pollinate it to increase its chances of reproduction since it doesn’t bloom so often.
The plant is able to grow up to three meters tall before it starts blooming to attract insects. It takes just a day to bloom, after which it’ll take at least another ten years.
At risk of extinction
Found natively in the Indonesian island of Sumatra, the plant has different species but is on the verge of extinction due to its rare blooming which happens only once in about ten years or more.
Sophie Daniel, a staff at the Royal Botanic Gardens Sydney said:
“The fact that they open very rarely…is obviously something that puts them at a little bit of a disadvantage in the wild. When they open, they have to hope that another flower is open nearby, because they can’t self-pollinate.”
There are only 330 of the plant estimated to be in the wild, although there are thousands estimated to be cultivated domestically. They can be found in botanic gardens in the US, Canada, Brazil, Europe, China, India and parts of Africa
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