Video caption, take a look: Kew Gardens' “corpse flower” blooms
June 19, 2024
Visitors to Kew Gardens can still get a glimpse and smell the titan arum plants, also known as corpse flowers, which burst into bloom en masse on Tuesday.
The flowers, which are said to emit a foul stench like rotten meat, usually only bloom once every two years.
According to a famous botanical garden in southwest London, each time the titan arum blooms, it attracts thousands of visitors who come to experience its “magnificent sight and unpleasant stench”.
The facility extended its opening hours on Tuesday but told the BBC the cherry blossoms were likely to only last until the end of Wednesday.
Image credit: Marnie Chesterton/BBC
Image caption: People line up inside the greenhouse to sniff the smelly flowers.
According to Kew Gardens, the plant has the largest floral structure in the world and can reach heights of nearly 10 feet (3 meters).
Its flowers are the colour of meat and the inflorescences give off heat, which helps spread the scent and can attract pollinators from up to half a mile away, according to Kew Gardens.
Marnie Chesterton, science journalist and presenter of BBC Radio 4's Inside Science, who visited the “hot and humid” conservatory on Wednesday, said there was “an audible buzz of excitement from the crowd.”
She explained that the plants' “odor peaked yesterday and could be detected as soon as you opened the greenhouse door,” but that it now “appears to be less severe than before.”
Describing the stench, she said: “I put my face close to the flowers and it smelled like an unwashed toilet and a strong smell like something had exploded in the back of the fridge. Definitely rotten.”
Image credit: Sebastian Ketley/Kew Gardens/PA
Image caption: A team of botanical horticulturists hand-pollinating Titan Arum plants at Kew Gardens
The plant grows only in the tropical rainforests of Sumatra, but is endangered in the wild due to deforestation and land degradation.
Visitors can see it in the Princess of Wales Conservatory on the grounds.
Marnie Chesterton's science report on smelly plants can be heard on BBC Radio 4's Inside Science at 16:30 on Thursday, or on BBC Sounds.
