The event had been anticipated for several weeks, so much so that some visitors even flocked to the Jean-Marie Pelt botanical garden in Villers-lès-Nancy every day in the hope of being there on the big day.
Tuesday was finally the day that the arum titan, a tropical flower more than two metres high and with a nauseating odour, chose to bloom. Also known as the “titan penis”, this gigantic plant is native to the island of Sumatra in Indonesia. To say that it is rare is an understatement: there are only a few specimens left in the world. This particular one has been growing in the Lorraine botanical garden for 30 years and is now the largest ever cultivated in France!
To allow its blooming, the greenhouse was kept at a constant temperature of 27°C and the plant was regularly watered and misted. The 33-kilo tuber has a huge blood-red corolla with a heart almost two metres in hight. And it is not just the colour that mimics the appearance of meat, the smell does so too. The stench of rotten meat is designed to attract small beetles that will then pollinate the flower.
However, for the curious ones among you, you better hurry if you still want to witness this botanical attraction: it’s only in flower for three days, so until around Friday. After that, you will probably have to wait twenty years to see this plant bloom again...
The botanical garden thus expects some 15,000 visitors between now and the end of the week. The tropical greenhouse is open from 8am to 9pm.
