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Giant 'corpse flower' blooms in Belgium

12:32 11/07/2013

A flower that smells like ‘a dead body lying in Florida for two weeks’ attracted some 5,000 people to the National Botanical Garden of Belgium in Meise this week, ten times their usual draw, reports NBC News’ Dana McMahan. The plant, a striking violet flower unfurled around a green stalk, looms over curious onlookers, stands some eight feet tall and weighs in at close to 140kg. Its smell is "like a dead rabbit that has been lying in the sun for two weeks," says Bart Van de Vijver, a researcher and botanist at the Botanical garden that houses the titan arum, also known as a "corpse flower." Its pungent aroma is designed to attract certain flies that usually feast on meat, as they are the plant's pollinators. Titan arums rarely bloom, but the garden has been lucky, says Van de Vijver. This week marks the third time theirs has bloomed since receiving the plant in 2008 from Bonn.

Inside the greenhouse the temperature is over 30°C. "You enter in a very sweaty, warm place with this decomposing body smell," said Van de Vijver, who has to wash his hair after work to remove the plant's odour. "I think you would turn around and go back if you weren't here to see this beautiful flower.” However, the smell is “not because it doesn't like people around," sys Van de Vijver. “It's only there to attract the insects, to say 'the flowers are open, you can come,'”. The perfume is as ephemeral as it is powerful, and it began fading Tuesday night. “As soon as the flowers are pollinated it doesn't need to invest energy to produce these pheromones. It costs a lot of energy to the plant to produce," says Van de Vijver. "In nature nothing happens without a reason — except with humans.”

Written by The Bulletin