By Angus Dalton
Death knocks twice.
In an extraordinary botanical double-act, a second corpse flower has started to bloom at the Royal Botanic Gardens Sydney about 2½ weeks after the flower named Putricia became a global sensation. And it’s even stinkier.
Putricia was the first corpse flower to bloom at the gardens in 15 years, and the spectacle attracted 1.7 million viewers on a live-stream and 27,000 visitors who waited up to 3½ hours to view one of the world’s largest – and most horrible smelling – flowers.
Putricia reached full bloom on January 23.Credit: Janie Barrett
The critically rare Sumatran plants produce chemicals that mimic the scent of rotting flesh to attract pollinating flies and beetles during their 24-48 hour bloom.
The flowers only bloom when they’re about 10 years old, and then once every five to seven years, so every ephemeral inflorescence presents a critical conservation opportunity.
On Saturday afternoon, the gardens announced that another blooming was under way. This flower – unofficially dubbed “Stinky” – was grown from a leaf cutting from the same plant as Putricia, making her a twin of Sydney’s most famous flower.
Despite being genetically identical, the flower is a little smaller at 1.3 metres compared with Putricia’s 1.6 metres, and has a lighter “skirt”.
The second corpse flower – a genetic clone of Putricia – attracts flies with her deathly fragrance.Credit: John Siemon
“I think she’s a little stinkier,” Brett Summerell, chief scientist of the gardens, said standing next to Stinky as blowflies buzzed around her tall green spadix. He described the smell as a deathly meld of “fish, dead mouse, dead possum”.
“Perhaps, the smaller you are, the more powerful punch you pack,” he said.
Sydney’s humid Indonesian-style weather may have helped bring about the dual blooming, he added.
Putricia 2.0, or “Stinky”, began to bloom on Saturday afternoon.Credit: Royal Botanic Gardens Sydney
When the second flower began to sprout from its underground corm, Summerell thought the plant was entering its “leaf stage”, during which it photosynthesises and gathers energy for its next bloom.
“It was a nice surprise,” when a bloom emerged instead, he said, adding two plants hadn’t ever flowered so close together at the gardens.
Stinky will not be put on public display, although the garden’s staff will update the cult online followers of Putricia about the progress of the newly unveiled plant in regular live-streams.
The second flower will remain in the garden’s nursery to maximise the opportunity for the garden’s scientists to study its bloom and apply lessons learnt from Putricia.
What Putricia looks like now: a cone of developing fruit, which will hopefully produce seeds.Credit: Royal Botanic Gardens Sydney
The scientists will soon remove Stinky’s skirt entirely to better collect her pollen. Being off-display will allow them to analyse the flower’s female flowers and pollen sacs, without the distraction of the crowds, to understand the plant’s reproductive cycle, Summerell said.
While Putricia was fertilised with donated pollen from a corpse flower in Queensland, there is no available pollen on hand for Stinky, highlighting the difficulty of conserving these rare flowers.
Testing of Putricia’s pollen is under way at the Mount Annan Botanic Gardens to try to find more ways to store pollen long-term for conservation, such as cryogenic freezing.
The garden’s staff are monitoring the development of Putricia’s fruit in the hopes some may mature and produce seeds.
The Examine newsletter explains and analyses science with a rigorous focus on the evidence. Sign up to get it each week.