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Smelly Diva Blooms Agencies
The world’s tallest and smelliest flower has bloomed, reaching a height of 2.94 meters, 18 cm more than the previous record for the species, the Stuttgart botanical garden.
The Titan Arum, Amorphophallus Titanum, nick named “corpse flower” because of its putrid stench, blooms rarely and briefly. Garden staff have nick named the purple flower ‘Diva’ and are charting its life on www.wilhelma.de.
But those keen for a glimpse, or a whiff, in person must be quick: just 24 hours after the 11 year-old plant produced its first flower, the bloom began to wilt.
The Titan Arum was discovered in 1878 in its sole indigenous habitat, the Indonesian island of Sumatra, and grows in cultivation in only a handful of places around the world.
Its scent has been likened to rotting fish or animal flesh. “The smell is crucial to its survival in its natural habitat because it attracts pollinating carrion beetles and flesh flies,” said botanist Franziska Lo-Kocke, who brought the bulb weighing some 40 kg from the University of Frankfurt 11 years ago.
Posted on: Apr 18, 2006
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