Let a thousand stinky blossoms bloom: how Australia became the world’s corpse flower destination

Visitors look at the titan arum as it begins to bloom at the Adelaide Botanic Gardens in 2023. The state’s corpse flower collection now holds in excess of 250 plants across different generations – the largest in Australia, and possibly the world. Photograph: Matt Turner/EPA

From little things glorious fetid things grow. Corpse flower blooms, once vanishingly rare, are becoming more commonplace in Australia.

More than a dozen bloomed across the country in 2025, including the infamous Putricia in Sydney, Morpheus in Canberra, Big Betty in Cooktown, and Spud and co in Cairns. But with plants kept in gardens across the country, and blooming more frequently after their first flower, you could catch a whiff of one soon.