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- Sydney Botanical Gardens attract visitors to rare corpse flower bloom
Sydney Botanical Gardens attract visitors to rare corpse flower bloom
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A corpse flower, specifically a Amorphophallus titanum, also known as "Titan Arum" or "bunga bangkai", has bloomed at the Botanic Gardens of Sydney after nearly 15 years. The plant, named "Putricia" by staff, emitted a strong and foul odor, comparable to a dead rat, for 24 hours. The bloom attracted a large crowd, with over 20,000 people visiting the gardens to catch a glimpse of the rare flower. The plant can grow up to 12 feet high and is known for its distinctive and unpleasant smell.
So much energy has been expended on flowering and fruiting that it may be years before the plant has enough stored energy to flower again.
The fact that they open very rarely, so they flower rarely, is obviously something that puts them at a little bit of a disadvantage in the wild.
Just for fun, we are displaying her in the Palm House, which dates from 1876 which is Victorian age. And that idea of visiting royalty and all of the pomp and grandeur and ceremony that would have gone along with that is something that we wanted our visitors to feel when they visit Putricia — she is glorious, she is stunning.
The inspiration for the display was really Queen Victoria's funeral crossed with Little Shop of Horrors, a little homage to David Lynch with some Gothic funeral parlour vibe and a dash of vintage sideshows thrown in.
