Thousands of people flock to feel a plant that flows dead, rotten rat waste | Environmental news

Huge crowds have queue in Sydney to catch a breath of flower that smells of “hot garbage”

It can feel the rotten flesh but “putricia”, the famous corpse on the internet, was the center of attention in the Botanical gardens of Sydney in the last two days.

The rare plant – Scientific name Amorphophallus titanum, but also known as “Titan Arum” or “Bunga Bangkai” in Indonesia where it is unleashed – began to flower Thursday, clearing an odor described as having the aromatic profile of “Rat dead” .

With 11 corpse flowers in the collection, the garden staff traditionally give everyone a nickname and this time, they settled on “putricia” – a combination of “putrid” and “patricia”.

Putricia has also become an influencer in the last 18 days, while thousands of people were monitoring a live flow created by the institution to document its growth from a simple bud at a flower of 1.6 meters high in time real.

With more than 1.5 million views and a very active discord community, John Siemon, director of horticulture and living collections in the gardens, says that the staff was “shocked by the shell” by the sudden popularity of Putricia.

Siemon said that at least 20,000 excited spectators had since crossed the doors to catch a putricia puff during the last week.

Professor Brett Sumrell, chief scientist of the Sydney botanical gardens, said that Putricia had taken the time to go up the production of his unique perfume, but was up to it on Thursday evening when the smell could be detected 20 meters away , outside his pavilion.

“It’s a bit of accumulation,” he said. “Over a period of time, while the flower begins to take place, it begins to generate heat and this heat begins to generate chemical reactions.

“What the plant is trying to do is producing a maximum of this smell so that it attracts insects, flies and beetles from all over the jungle so that they can come pollinate it.”

The oversized flower has channeled crimson petals and can measure more than a meter (3 feet) with a sharp central stem which can exceed 3 meters (10 feet).

The disgusting smell of the flower and the reddish structure are designed to attract pollinators so that it can reproduce.

The plant generally does not flower more than once every a few years and only lasts about a day. A specimen has not flourished in Sydney since 2010, making Putricia the fifth corpse flower to flower in the gardens.

After about 48 hours, the yellow rod in the center of the corpse flower collapses and it will be a minimum of three to five years before the plant can flower.

The resident of Sydney, Rebecca McGee-Collett, who waited 90 minutes to see the flower on Thursday evening, said that the flower was beautiful, but the smell was “like hot garbage”.

The factory is from the Indonesian island of Sumatra and is listed as in the process of disappearing due to the loss and poaching of the habitat, with 300 to 500 specimens of Titan Arum supposed to be left in nature.