In This Australian City, Thousands Line Up To See 'Corpse Flower'

Thousands of people queued up in the city of Geelong, south of Melbourne in Australia, to catch a glimpse of what's once-in-a-decade occurrence -- the blooming 'corpse flower'. Amorphophallus Titanum, often shortened to Titan Arum, is popular as the 'corpse flower' in the region for the putrid stench that comes out of it when it blooms to attract beetles and flies, CNN reported.

What makes the plant unique is that it blooms once in 10 years and lasts 24-48 hours, making it a highly coveted event, drawing in large crowds.

“It smells like a dead possum,” a child said, describing the plant.

Geelong Botanic Garden received this plant as a gift from the State Herbarium in Adelaide, South Australia, in 2021. For years, horticulturalists have been waiting for the signs of a nascent bud. Reese McIlvena, the park's manager, said the plant started blooming on Monday (November 11) after several days of anticipation.

On the first day, nearly 5,000 people arrived at the venue to see it. Most visitors described its smell as similar to a dead mouse or stinky pond.

As the garden was scheduled to remain open until Tuesday evening, when the bloom was expected to end, the authorities even offered a live stream of the 'corpse flower' to those interested in watching it but were somehow unable to make it in person.

According to local media, tens of thousands of people, not just from Australia, but from other parts of the world, watched it on the livestream.

Not only that, some visitors have returned to the site multiple times to see the plant in its various stages of blooming.

The 'corpse flower' is native to Indonesia and has been listed as “endangered” under the IUCN Red List of Threatened Species. Its native habitat of Sumatran forest was devastated by land degradation and deforestation. Most of its land has been converted into plantations for timber, paper or oil palm, IUCN said.

This plant survives for roughly 30 to 40 years and only blooms a handful of times during its lifetime. As per IUCN estimates, only a few hundred of them are left in the wild now.