New Zealand

Exotic plant may release deathly miasma in Dunedin

08:43 am on 18 October 2020

Dunedin residents may be in for another stinky summer spectacle from the botanic garden's corpse plant.

Corpse flower in bloom. Photo: Supplied / Nick Lloyd

The corpse plant is famous for producing one of the world's largest flowers with a nauseating smell comparable with rotting flesh.

Next week the garden's staff will weigh the plant's bulb-like underground stem - called a corm - to get an idea if it will unleash another rare flowers.

If the corm weighs more than 20 kilograms, it's an indication the plant has reached its potential to flower.

Thousands of people flocked to the see the Dunedin's plant first and only flowering in February 2018.

The flower typically lasts for only 24 to 36 hours.

The plant regularly produces a single leaf the size of a small tree that reaches up to six metres high and four metres wide in the wild for most of its life.