Thousands flock to see rare, smelly corpse flower bloom in Sydney

SYDNEY: A rare plant known as the corpse flower bloomed in Sydney on Friday for the first time in more than a decade, emitting an odour likened to rotting flesh and delighting thousands who queued for a whiff.

For the past week, curiosity seekers have been visiting the specimen nicknamed Putricia – a combination of “putrid” and “Patricia” – at the city’s Royal Botanic Garden. The institution stayed open until midnight on Thursday to accommodate the crowd.

The corpse flower's scientific name is amorphophallus titanum and is called bunga bangkai in Indonesia, where it is found in the wild. The oversize flower features fluted crimson petals and can measure more than a metre (3 feet) across with a pointed centre stalk that can top 3 metres (10 feet).

The plant typically does not bloom more than once every few years and it lasts only about a day. A specimen has not bloomed in Sydney since 2010.

As the long-awaited unfurling of Putricia’s petals began on Thursday afternoon, queues lengthened and visitors waited as long as three hours.

“The fact that it's so huge, it takes so long [to bloom], and it smells so foul really attracts people to it,” Sydney Botanic Gardens chief scientist Brett Summerell said.

"I liken the smell to a dead possum," he said.

Sydney resident Rebecca McGee-Collett, who waited 90 minutes to see the flower on Thursday evening, said the flower was beautiful but the smell was "like hot garbage".

A live stream of the plant has accumulated close to one million hits.