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| Down Under |
| Rare bloom creates a stink |
| 2005-08-26 |
| A RARE stink hung over the Royal Botanic Gardens in Melbourne today. The garden's foul-smelling Tongue Orchid is flowering for just the second time in 30 years, displaying finger-like red flowers among metre-long tongue-like leaves. The Papua New Guinea native is one of a number of plants that produce flowers smelling of rotting meat to attract blowflies, and thus help pollination. "If you mixed, say, two- or three-day-old rotting flesh with manure you would get pretty close, I think," the garden's Tropical House curator Jeremy Prentice said. "It's very unusual. "It is fairly strong and it will get stronger over the next couple of days as more of the flowers fully open." The tropical plant would not grow naturally in Australia, and it required love, care and attention to coax it into bloom, Mr Prentice said. "They enjoy a fair bit of food, and also a lot of water and high humidity," he said. "It's nice to have your plants flower because it shows they are happy." Bulbophyllum Fletcherianum plants grow on host rocks in the wild, but the one in the Melbourne gardens has been grown on a piece of cork oak. The plant failed to bloom after it was planted 30 years ago, but it flowered in 2002 following a transplant, Mr Prentice said. He hoped it would now follow its natural life cycle to bloom again in three years. The tongue orchid is expected to be on public display for around a week. |
| Posted by:God Save The World |
| #5 lol good one Jackal. They have porta-pottys but I haven't heard of any shower facilities. "If you mixed, say, two- or three-day-old rotting flesh with manure you would get pretty close too much info |
| Posted by: Jan 2005-08-26 20:41 |
| #4 Simpson's episode, the focus of a few Dennis the Menace episodes and/or movies and many other shows I'm sure. Mmmm tongue orchid, smells like home on the farm. EP |
| Posted by: ElvisHasLeftTheBuilding 2005-08-26 17:00 |
| #3 wasn't this a Simpson episode? |
| Posted by: hey mo 2005-08-26 16:48 |
| #2 Isn't that special, the rotting stinkweed is in full bloom. |
| Posted by: bigjim-ky 2005-08-26 09:55 |
| #1 I was going to say send one to Crawford, but I guess no one would notice. |
| Posted by: Jackal 2005-08-26 09:52 |