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The Conversation
The Conversation
Environment
Gregory Moore, Senior Research Associate, School of Agriculture, Food and Ecosystem Sciences, The University of Melbourne

Corpse flowers and flesh flies: why so many plants and fungi stink like death warmed up

Bpk Maizal/Shutterstock

Right now, people are lining up at the Geelong Botanic Gardens to see and smell the giant corpse flower, a rare plant that stinks like a dead body.

This is the titan arum. It’s a plant that makes news whenever it flowers in a botanic garden around the world. It’s sometimes called a lily, but it’s an arum, a genus not closely related to true lilies.

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