Sydney corpse flower ‘Putricia’ blooms at the Royal Botanic Garden

ABC NEWS (Australia)

It's the smell Sydney has been anticipating for weeks, and the Royal Botanic Gardens' corpse flower has today begun to bloom. Thousands of people have visited the plant in person, and tuned in online to witness the event, which lasts just one day.

Transcript

00:00Well, it's starting to actually set in, Joe, I have to say.

00:06I'm getting notes of boiled cabbage, maybe a bit of body odour, and the scientists on

00:13the ground here have confirmed that that is not just my armpits, that is the corpse flower

00:17itself.

00:18Too much detail, Sean.

00:22But as you can see, the corpse flower behind me is starting to blossom and bloom.

00:28This is an event that many people have been anticipating over more than a week and a half

00:32now.

00:33And that anticipation has led to some pretty unhinged action in the comments section of

00:39the livestream as people from around the world watch this plant.

00:45She's known scientifically as Amorphophallus titanum, but to her many fans, she's Putricia.

00:53And that's led to a massive sensation and just massive lines outside for people who've

01:00come down upon hearing that she's finally starting to bloom.

01:03For the team here at the Botanic Gardens in Sydney, they say they're just delighted that

01:09this plant that they've raised is bringing people joy.

01:12It's brought the teams together.

01:14I've met people in the organisation I've never even met, so it's brought us together internally

01:20in the organisation and I think the whole of Sydney and maybe the world if you're looking

01:25at the feeds.

01:27And Sean, just in terms of if people have just tuned in and they're kind of not aware

01:32of what's actually going on, what's happened with the blooming?

01:35Are there kind of two petals and they're opening?

01:39And has that kind of happened significantly just while you've been there?

01:45So we've been on Putricia watch, as the many thousands of people online have, and we saw

01:52on the live stream that she was beginning to bloom this afternoon and raced down here

01:58to cover it.

01:59And sort of speaking scientifically about this plant, while it does really stink, it's

02:04an evolutionary advantage that this plant has developed over time.

02:10Scientists say some of the chemicals that are in its smell are also found in things

02:14like sweaty socks, rotting fish, even faeces.

02:18And that's something that it does to attract insects to it so that it can, to help with

02:25its reproduction and pollination process.

02:28For Putricia behind me, the Royal Botanic Garden staff will be intervening in that process

02:33later tonight.

02:34They've only got an hour, sorry, they've only got 24 hours of her blooming to do so.

02:39They're going to try and then give her a bit of help to reproduce and create some offspring

02:45for Putricia, which will then go into conservation projects around the world.

02:50Because this plant is actually endangered in the wild.

02:53It's native to West Sumatra in Indonesia.

02:56And there's estimated only a few hundred left in the wild.

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