Indonesian plant Titan Arum has the world’s largest blossom, standing 1.9 metres in height and smelling like decaying flesh to attract beetles.
Hundreds of visitors queued to watch the rare flower, which opens for only one or two days.
The Titan Arum, aka "the corpse flower" (Tiny Titan) at Cambridge University bloomed over the weekend after 11 years, drawing in 11,000 people who wanted to smell the nauseating, rotting, horrible scent.
Indonesian plant Titan Arum has the world’s largest blossom, standing 1.9 metres in height and smelling like decaying flesh to attract beetles.
Hundreds of visitors queued to watch the rare flower, which opens for only one or two days.
The Titan Arum, aka "the corpse flower" (Tiny Titan) at Cambridge University bloomed over the weekend after 11 years, drawing in 11,000 people who wanted to smell the nauseating, rotting, horrible scent.
The bloom uses the scent of rotting flesh to attract pollinators, mainly flies.
The first evening of bloom is when the female flowers are open and receptive to pollen. This is the time when the bloom smells the most so it can lure in flies which hopefully have visited another Titan Arum bloom recently and are carrying pollen.
The tall center part of the bloom, the spadix, actually heats up the first night to help disperse the odor far distances. The temperature of the spadix will reach about 98F, about the same temperature as the human body.
