Thousands flock to sniff ‘corpse flower’ in bloom for first time in 18 years

A flower that smells like “rotting meat” and “garbage” has attracted an influx of visitors to a botanical park after it surprised staff by blooming for the very first time in almost 20 years.

Commonly known as the corpse flower, the Amorphophallus titanum is now in full bloom at Frederik Meijer Gardens and Sculpture Park, in Michigan, USA, and thousands of people have flooded the park to see the extremely rare flower before it wilts.

The plant, which has earned the name “Putricia” thanks to its rancid stench, began to flower on Wednesday afternoon and the park put out a call to horticultural fans advising to rush down to get a glimpse – and a sniff – of the native Indonesian plant.

It was planted as a seedling in 2000 but has failed to bloom until now, however the park’s director of horticulture, Steve LaWarre, has insisted that they did nothing special and said the spontaneous bloom is down to “perfect nature”.

LaWarre told The Detroit News: “It’s 100 percent nature. All we’ve done is we’ve watered it, fertilized it and given it the right conditions. Then nature does its thing, so it’s just pretty extraordinary.”

“Even though it smells terrible, it’s going to smell a lot worse,” LaWarre added, “Anytime a plant goes through this much effort to smell this bad, I have to take a minute and smell it.”

The corpse flower – also referred to as the ‘stinky plant’ – will flower for just 24 to 36 hours until it begins to wilt and the park confirmed that it would not be expected to bloom again for at least three to five years. It was planted 18 years ago when the park received it as a one-year-old seedling, which fit into a four and a half inch pot.

The park installed a whiteboard outside of their tropical conservatory and asked visitors to describe what they could smell after taking a whiff of the plant. The most common answers were “rotten flesh”, “stinky feet” and “fish”.

However, some people got creative, with one describing the rank smell as like his “patient’s necrotic foot from yesterday” and another claiming it reminded them of their “dad’s breath”. 

Writing on Facebook, a park spokesperson said: “We have had it here at Meijer Gardens in one of our back greenhouses. We brought it out into the Lena Meijer Tropical Conservatory to display when we knew it was going to flower. The strong odour attracts carrion beetles and flesh flies to pollinate the plant.

“The inside is a deep red colour and also heats up to 98 degrees to further attract these pollinators. The average lifespan is about 40 years. We’ll keep posting about Putricia at it gets closer to blooming!”

What do you think? Would you like to take a whiff of the corpse plant?