Sydney’s long-awaited, foul-smelling ‘corpse flower’ is finally blooming

Today, you would be forgiven for mistaking a greenhouse in the Royal Botanic Garden for a high society gala. A red rope separates fans and photographers from a plush velvet curtain. A humidifier wafts mist below the focus of everyone’s attention: a long-awaited debut into Sydney society, the vomit-smelling, rotting-flesh imitating “corpse flower” is blooming.

The Gardens have nicknamed the corpse flower “Putricia” after its sickening perfume, described by chief scientist Brett Summerell as akin to the rotting flesh of a possum, wet socks and cat vomit.

Its inflorescence marks the first time in 15 years that the rare flower has bloomed at the Botanic Garden.

After a run-up so drawn out that staff secretly feared the flower would abort its bloom, Putricia began to splay open about 1pm on Thursday to reveal her inner corpse-red flesh.

“I came in this morning, and it was still fairly closed around the spate; this frill of tissue around the middle was tightly closed. But it’s definitely opening,” Summerell said. “But now it’s opening; it’s what we’ve been waiting for all week.”

The blooming process will take about six hours, and Putricia will spend at least 24 hours in full bloom, harnessing an internal temperature of 38 degrees to pump plumes of wretched perfume into the air to attract pollinating flies and beetles.

Josh Graham has been visiting the corpse flower Putricia from Newcastle all week.Credit: Flavio Brancaleone

About 3pm, the Botanic Garden’s Palm House was filled with the babble of ecstatic guests and awe-inspiring classical music, but the stench had yet to start. Summerell said he expected Putricia to get putrid later this afternoon.

By making a donation, spectators can queue to bask uninhibited in the corpse flower’s stink.

The garden will be open until midnight on Thursday. Putricia has already attracted more than 16,000 visitors since being open to the public from Friday.

Ailsa Piper, a Sydney writer, was at the nearby Art Gallery of NSW when she spied the growing line for the corpse flower by chance and was enticed into the gardens by enthusiastic staff.

“It’s a metaphor for our lives – it opens, and it’s beautiful, and then it’s just gone,” Piper said. “But she’s doing it slowly. She’s making us all slow down. I only had a few minutes in there, but it felt like forever.

“I would love to touch her. That velvety skirt is so beautiful. It’s a very sexy looking beast!”

Ailsa Piper after seeing Putricia bloom by chance.Credit: SMH

Piper said she planned to come back again tonight. Putricia’s flowering, a decade in the making, reminded her of the eight years it took to write her recent memoir about grief, and the virtues of patience, gratitude and waiting for bad times to pass.

“There’s a metaphor everywhere in nature. I just feel incredibly lucky.”

A livestream that has focused on Putricia in anticipation of the spontaneous event has surpassed 500,000 views. Since last week, viewers have watched sporadic heat and height monitoring from a team of horticulturalists.

Josh Graham, a self-described rare plant addict, has braved unreliable trains to visit Putricia from Newcastle over the past week.

“As soon as they put up the livestream, I was watching it. As soon as they opened the glass house, I was here,” said Graham, who owns at least 60 smaller varieties of plants in the corpse flower family. “She’s not smelly, which I’m thankful for.” Is he excited to experience the stink? “Yes and no.”

Putricia will flower for only about 24 hours before it withers and dies.

“She’ll inevitably collapse in on herself, this spadix that we see going up the middle of the plant, the tall phallic object, will flop over and essentially collapse and die,” Summerell said.

Unbeknown to Putricia’s fans, horticulturalists at the garden had begun to worry that the flower wouldn’t bloom at all.

On some occasions, corpse flowers collapse before blooming, and the wait was so long Summerell feared Putricia might abort. When she began to open on Thursday, Gardens staff say they embraced and wept with joy.

Once her flower withers and the 1.6-metre spadix collapses, Putricia’s 15-kilogram underground corm will live on – and so might her children.

Corpse flowers generally can’t self-pollinate, but Summerell said staff would use refrigerated pollen from another plant to try to pollinate her in the hopes of gathering fertile seeds.

“Hopefully, we will have progeny of her that will be able to help in terms of the conservation of the species.”

The macabre attraction of the flower’s wicked smell helps inform visitors about worldwide conservation efforts to protect the corpse flower, which is threatened by habitat clearance and poaching in Indonesia.

Putricia’s appearance marks only the fifth time a corpse flower has bloomed at the Royal Botanic Garden, although there is a greenhouse full of the plants, also known as Amorphophallus titanum, which translates as “giant deformed penis”.

A Spotify playlist, Facebook fan page, Discord channel and souvenir stickers that read “I have seen and smelt Putricia the Amorphophallus”, are all evidence of the growing hysteria around the rare plant. One commenter on the livestream wrote: “I will give her whatever she wants” followed by “my wallet, my kidneys, they [are] for Putricia”.

For home-bound hysterics, the livestream following the flower’s unfurling petals will continue until they perish.

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