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A specimen of the enormous and fetid ‘corpse flower’ or ‘titan’s penis’ (Amorphophallus titanum) in all its splendor this week became the attraction of the Meise Botanical Garden, north of Brussels.
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“Is beautiful. I had no idea it was so huge,” said a tourist, Carine Kurris, while around dozens of visitors they struggled to take the best photographs of the enormous plant with their mobile phones.
The ‘corpse flower’ is famous both for the shape of a huge phallus (which gives the plant its scientific name, literally amorphous phallus of a titan) as well as the strong smell of decomposing flesh that it gives off.
The Meise specimen is just over two meters high and is estimated to weigh around 100 kilos.
Each flowering of A. titanum is an unusual event, since the plant lives a maximum of 40 years and in that period it blooms only three or four times and the flower survives only about three days.
The strong smell of rotting meat is used by the plant to attract pollinators. According to Meise Botanical Garden spokesperson Manon van Hoye, The smell is similar to “garbage that has been left out in the sun for too long.”.
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Van Hoye added that it is exciting to see the flower in all its majesty. “The form is architectural. I love its colors and also its history, knowing that it is a plant threatened with extinction and that it is being protected,” said Van Hoye.
