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Odorous orchid

MELBOURNE: : Forget the sweet scent of roses — the Royal Botanic Gardens here was suffused with an unusual stench on Friday, as the gardens' foul-smelling tongue orchid flowered for the second time in 30 years.

With its finger-like red flowers among metre-long, tongue-shaped leaves, the orchid native to Papua New Guinea is one of several plants with flowers that smell like rotting meat to attract flies, which help its pollination.

The gardens' Tropical House curator, Jeremy Prentice, did his best to describe the odour. "If you mixed, say, two- or three-day-old rotting flesh with manure you would get pretty close, I think.. It's very unusual."

He said the wild orchid, Bulbophyllum fletcherianum, had failed to bloom after it was planted 30 years ago but flowered in 2002 after transplantation. It should follow its life cycle into another bloom in three years.

Meanwhile, be warned when visiting the gardens. "It is fairly strong — and it will get stronger over the next couple of days as more of the flowers fully open," the curator said. — AP

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