What a stinker! World's smelliest flower opens for the first time in 75 YEARS

By Daily Mail Reporter

from http://www.dailymail.co.uk/

For botanists, it doesn't get more exciting than this - after 75 years, the Titan Arum plant has unfurled its leaves and is in full bloom.

For curious crowds who gathered, they perhaps realised that a once-in-a-lifetime look is more than enough - thanks to its pungent odour of rotting flesh.

The flower, nicknamed 'Corpse flower', bloomed late on Good Friday at the University of Basel, Switzerland and is expected to remain open until Easter Sunday.

Miracle-Gro: The flower opened for the first time in 75 years on Good Friday

The eight foot plant, which is indigenous to Sumatra's rainforests in Indonesia, has the largest unbranched shoot in the world. On average, they bloom once in a decade.

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Titan Arum is coveted by collectors and plant enthusiasts around the world because of its strange blooming patterns.

It produces umbrella-sized petals which open to a diameter of three to four feet.

Its distinctive smell can be detected from half a mile away. The odour, which is usually strongest at night, is meant to attract pollinators such as carrion beetles and flesh flies.

Twelve of them are housed at the Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew, in the Princess of Wales Conservatory among hundreds of other tropical plants.

Once in a lifetime: Crowds capture Titan Arum in bloom at the University of Basel, Switzerland

Rare sighting: Botanists love the plant because it blooms so infrequently - despite the smell of rotting flesh

When the plants are ready to pollinate, the stem heats up to release a pungent smell, which lasts for about three days.

The largest Arum at Kew gardens weighs 200lb and grows at a staggering rate of a quarter of an inch an hour.

It guzzles liquid fertiliser and potassium each week to keep up its strength while bedded in roomy surroundings.

Sir David Attenborough, who invented the name Titan Arum, was the first to capture it flowering on film for his BBC TV series The Private Life of Plants.

He dropped the plant’s original name – Amorphophallus – perhaps because of the reference to male genitalia.

Beauty: The plant originates from Sumatra in Indonesia

Captivating: Crowds gather as the plant prepares to open its leaves

Scientists clone oldest living organism

Lomatia tasmanica has proved very difficult to successfully propagate. (Tasmanian Parks and Wildlife Service)

• Video: Tasmania to protect 'oldest living organism' (The Midday Report)

Tasmanian scientists have cloned what is believed to be the world's oldest living organism as part of a battle to save it from a deadly fungus.

The tree species commonly known as King's Lomatia was first discovered in Tasmania's remote south-west wilderness 70 years ago.

Carbon dating revealed the trees were more than 43,000 years old.

Botanist Natalie Tapson from the Royal Tasmanian Botanical Gardens says the tree can only reproduce by cloning itself.

And she says all 500 stands of the tree - produced from one original plant - are under threat from the deadly root rot disease phytophthora, which is spreading rapidly through grass plains surrounding its habitat.

She says an insurance population is being established by creating clones through tissue cultures.

"When we first started we lost all the plants almost straight away," she said.

"We now have about 20 plants in tissue culture that have survived for about eight months and we're hopeful that we can keep tubing these on and get more and more plants that way."