It's big, it's smelly, and it's blooming in Sydney

The Corpse Flower is about to bloom at the Royal Botanic Garden Sydney.

A giant flower with an unusual smell is drawing attention to Sydney's botanical gardens. Source: SIPA USA / AAP

A giant flower with an unusual smell is drawing attention to Sydney's botanical gardens. The Corpse flower has started to bloom and is expected to fully open tonight - the first time in 15 years.


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TRANSCRIPT

"Roses would be ideal wouldn't it? No clearly a dead body."

Known as one of the smelliest flowers in the world, the Corpse flower in Sydney's botanical gardens called Putricia has an undesirable odour.

Some say it smells like dead animals or dead bodies, and one person says it smells like pina colada infused with cholera.

Putricia's blooming has been long-awaited.

The rare titan arum, a type of carrion flower, has the world's largest and stinkiest flower spike and blooms for only 24 hours.

John Siemon is the Director of Horticulture and Living Collections.

"Amorphophallus titanium means giant deformed penis which captures people's imagination and creativities and you know and obviously who doesn't love one."

The plant is originally from Indonesia, known as the Bunga Bangkai, and is found in the rainforests of western Sumatra.

It’s a rare and endangered species that can be up to 3 metres tall.

"The fact that this giant deformed penis is huge and engaging is more than 1.6 metres in height this specimen, has really allowed people to get up close to it. Particularly those who are visiting here and create a conversation about threatened species that often isn't on the topic of anyone's dining tables."

Over 500-thousand people around the world are watching a live feed on Youtube, in anticipation of the bloom.

Over the past week, more than 5,000 people have lined up to see the flower.

The flower also has its own Spotify playlist, which includes tracks such as Seal's Kiss from a Rose, and a Facebook fan page.

"Every time one of these flowers blooms around the world people flock to them in their thousands. The last flower in Australia attracted about 20-thousand people in long lines waiting for hours at a time. We've already got thousands of people go through here but the attention has been widespread we've had interest from right across the globe and we know from around the world there are people watching the livestream."

With nearly a million clicks online, viewers have commented things like "Putricia for president", calling her the "unproblematic queen".

The flower is expected to fully bloom tonight, with the Botanic Gardens set to be open until midnight.

More visitors are expected over the weekend.

"I just know it's a kind of flower that like blooms, when it's about to die its like - and will bloom through its leaves and it will like have like smell like dead animals and have flies and other dead animals to like pollinate it."

John Siemon says they would like to see more botanic gardens around the globe to ensure the pollination and conservation of flowers like Putricia.

This visitor says it's an unusual occurrence.

"It's an event that doesn't happen so often, so its definitely worth to come down and have a look and just the enormously, I mean look how big it is."

Sophie Daniel is the Manager of Interpretation and Placemaking at Botanic Garden.

"We have a red carpet once you enter the palm house, visitors walk down that red carpet flanked by an onward of palms and when they reach that beautiful stage at the front she is there in all her glory in front of a velvet curtain which is inspired by the films of David Lynch so that sense of mystery and drama and a little bit of the uncanny maybe a touch of the horror. And she's surrounded by beautiful plants in the rainforest to complement her including some of her relatives and amorphophallus titanium."

Putricia is one of several titan arums in the botanic gardens, while other corpse flowers have bloomed in other Australian cities in recent years.

Thousands turned out to Adelaide Botanic Garden in 2023 to watch the 1.5m-tall specimen unfurl its leaves, while a similar event took place in Geelong in November.

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