Sydney may soon enjoy the scent of its ‘corpse flower’: NPR

A corpse flower, affectionately named ‘Putricia’, is shown in public as it prepares to bloom at the Royal Botanic Garden Sydney on January 18 in Sydney. An amorphophallus titanum the flower is known for its foul smell, reminiscent of rotting flesh.

Lisa Maree Williams/Getty Images

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Lisa Maree Williams/Getty Images

Staff and visitors to Australia Royal Botanic Gardens Sydney hoping to see – and smell – a rare event that could come at any moment: the flowering of a giant amorphophallus titanum, also known as the “corpse flower”.

The flower’s Latin scientific name translates as “giant, misshapen penis.”

Visitors archive by taking selfies of the flower as it sits on a raised podium, protected by velvet rope. The botanical garden also has create a live stream so everyone has a chance to capture the momentous bloom. On Wednesday, around 3,000 people were online and saw “Putricia”, as the plant has been dubbed – a portmanteau of “rotten” and “Patricia”.

“People have become quite obsessed with her,” Daniella Pasqualini, the garden’s horticulture development officer, was quoted as saying in The Guardian. “She has taken her own life.”

The obsession is understandable. Sydney has been waiting 15 years for a bloom at the Royal Botanic Garden. It will also be easy to miss – the bloom is practically gone from the rose in about 24 hours, experts say.

The plant is huge – measuring 5 feet tall. But it’s the aroma that really catches the public’s attention, says Emily Colletti, who cares Missouri Botanical Garden collection of amorphophallus titanum.

When it finally blooms, the flower will smell “like rotting garbage or dead mice,” she says.

The plant is native to the rainforests of the Indonesian island of Sumatra and can grow up to 9 feet tall. Colletti says it blooms every two to five years — up to five times in its lifetime.

While there are “fewer than a thousand” of the plants left in the wild, “there are quite a few in cultivation,” says Colletti, adding that some collections may contain 100 plants.

Sydney’s specimen has “this beautiful reddish, brownish, reddish brown around the edges of (a) frilled skirt, and that’s a good sign that it’s getting close to opening,” she says, but warns that it is often difficult to say.

Despite the signs, things don’t always go according to plan. “I’ve actually looked at one … 20 minutes before it started opening, and you had no idea it was going to open 20 minutes later.”

Two flowers bloomed in 2023 at San Francisco’s Conservatory of Flowers and the San Diego Botanic Garden. A decade earlier, NPR reported on one blooming at the US Botanic Garden.