...So obviously we went to see it.
The Titan Arum is a rare plant which grows in the jungle, usually in Indonesia. It grows extremely rapidly (40 days from tiny shoot to a huge, phallic protuberance double the height of me). It is the largest known plant in the world, which is incredible given its growth speed - and there are not that many known specimens.
But by far the most famous aspect of this plant and, I suspect, its main draw, is its smell. A pungent aroma reminiscent of dead possums. In Australia. Probably dead monkeys in Indonesia. And with fragrant undertones of poo. This is possibly the only chance we will have to see (and smell) this plant in bloom. It promises to be stomach churningly, dry retchingly appalling. Everybody is very excited.
When we get there we queue, while a botanist from the Melbourne Botanical gardens talks us through the details.
"The smell attracts flies to pollinate it," he says, "and it was very pungent yesterday."
There is a ripple of excitement. Everybody giggles and tries to look as though they are not absolutely desperate to be disgusted.
"...today is the last of its three day flowering period," continues the botanist, "and so now it barely smells at all."
There is a perceptible moan of disappointment. Would this plant attract so much attention I wonder, from those of us who are not keen botanists, if it was simply a rare plant that was quite big, and didn't happen to be famous for smelling so horrible? Somehow I doubt it. Although, to be fair to it, there is the penis element. Its Latin name is 'Amorphophallus Titanum'. And that's got to count for something.
We get to the front of the queue. Fittingly, I am suffering today from some sort of travellers indigestion, (to put it delicately) and so of course it has seemed perfectly reasonable to do a sort of public toilet crawl to this venue in order to get a good lungful of vomit inducing stenchiness.
When they let us in the plant is indeed amazing. It is literally double M's height, with cabbage like leaves, cupping it like a half peeled banana skin, and wrinkled at the edges to reveal a deep reddish purple underside roughly the colour of a blood blister. Protruding majestically out of it is a long yellow spike, with the texture of dried orange peel or cellulite and a sort of faded yellow colour. If you feel that these analogies are a little lacking in poetic beauty, may I refer you back to the title of this entry. What, precisely, were you expecting?
The rather harried looking botanist who greets us at the door has imported us, with a rather touching hopefulness, to remember on the way through the glasshouse, to have a look at the cocoa plant, the lovely deep green leaves of the ferns, to breathe in the more fetching fragrance of the flowers. Everyone is rushing past all this, brushing aside such minor attractions in their eagerness to reach the phallus and smell the corpses. Even I, trying to please the poor botanist, find myself giving the other plants a brief examination which is at best, cursory.
"Ooh. A banana plant" I murmer distractedly, straining for a glimpse and perhaps an early whiff, of the star attraction.
Twice in as many days we have listened to somebody comment upon the strange propensity of our species to seek out and indeed relish bitter flavours, which for every other species are avoided, being associated with poison.
"Scratch and sniff!" Proclaimed small grey squares in the comic books of my youth, "to let the stink bomb out!"
Eagerly I scratched. Deeply I inhaled.
I seem to remember those comics sold very well. And the scratch and sniff horror boxes were especially popular.
When we reach the plant itself everybody leans in and sniffs expectantly. Nothing happens. Collectively, we lean in closer. In the end there are at least four or five people, myself included with noses pressed right up against the plant. Not a whisker, not a whiff, not the tiniest suggestion of expired possum enters our disappointed nostrils. And there were rather more enhanced 'undertones of poo' in most of the public toilets I have visited on the way here. Overtones in some cases.
There are, in all truthfulness, several people busily photographing this spectacle of rare botanical life. But the woman behind me rather sums up the rest of us.
"Can't smell anything," she says, "come on, let's go."
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