For the next 30 hours, visitors of the Botanical garden in Meise (Flemish Brabant), just outside of Brussels, have a rare opportunity to see – and smell – one of the world's largest flowering plants: the Giant Arum.
The Giant Arum began opening just after 16:00 on Monday. Its spectacular bloom lasts around 48 hours, but it is the plant's unmistakeable smell that makes it such an extraordinary experience.
The smell is described as "somewhere between a cadaver, rancid cheese and rotten fish", with the Indonesians calling it the "corpse plant."
As unpleasant as the smell may be, it serves an important purpose. When the spike heats up, it releases the odour to attract carrion beetles and flies which pollinate the flowers in the wild.
And the Giant Arum is just as unusual in appearance as in its smells. The Scientific name, Amorphophallus titanum, translates roughly as "giant misshapen penis". Standing 2,23 meters tall, the plant is located in the atrium of the gardens tropical greenhouse. Its enormous flowering structure consists of thousands of tiny flowers surrounding a tall, yellowish spike.
On Tuesday, the garden is running free behind-the-scenes tours in English, Dutch and French, every hour from 11:00 to 17:00. The flower is expected to close by Wednesday afternoon.
