- Jul 10, 2004
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A flower that smells like death to attract a certain type of fly for pollination? Nature is very weird sometimes.
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A flower that smells like a dead body lying in Florida for two weeks attracted some 5,000 people to the National Botanic Garden of Belgium outside of Brussels this week, ten times their usual draw.
The plant, a striking violet flower unfurled around a green stalk, looms over curious onlookers, stands some eight feet tall and weighs in at close to 300 pounds.
Its smell is "like a dead rabbit that has been lying in the sun for two weeks and you open the box," said Bart Van de Vijver, a researcher and botanist at the Botanic garden that houses the titan arum, also known as a "corpse flower." Its pungent aroma is designed to attract certain flies that usually feast on meat, as they are the plant's pollinators.
Titan arums rarely bloom, but the garden has been lucky, said Van de Vijver. This week marks the third time theirs has bloomed since receiving the plant in 2008 from Bonn, Germany. The garden notifies their Facebook fans when the plant blooms, along with the media.
That's how we attract people, said said Van de Vijver. We don't use smell we use newspapers.
http://www.usmessageboard.com/newthread.php?do=newthread&f=41
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A flower that smells like a dead body lying in Florida for two weeks attracted some 5,000 people to the National Botanic Garden of Belgium outside of Brussels this week, ten times their usual draw.
The plant, a striking violet flower unfurled around a green stalk, looms over curious onlookers, stands some eight feet tall and weighs in at close to 300 pounds.
Its smell is "like a dead rabbit that has been lying in the sun for two weeks and you open the box," said Bart Van de Vijver, a researcher and botanist at the Botanic garden that houses the titan arum, also known as a "corpse flower." Its pungent aroma is designed to attract certain flies that usually feast on meat, as they are the plant's pollinators.
Titan arums rarely bloom, but the garden has been lucky, said Van de Vijver. This week marks the third time theirs has bloomed since receiving the plant in 2008 from Bonn, Germany. The garden notifies their Facebook fans when the plant blooms, along with the media.
That's how we attract people, said said Van de Vijver. We don't use smell we use newspapers.
http://www.usmessageboard.com/newthread.php?do=newthread&f=41
