"Total stinker" Check out the orchid that smells like a rotten cabbage
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Bulbophyllum phalaenopsis
If you're visiting Cambridge University Botanic Garden in England on a school trip soon, well... you've been WARNED!
A rare orchid flower, known as Bulbophyllum phalaenopsis, is currently emitting its exotic aroma. Mmmmmmm.
Posting on social media to welcome visitors to sample this treat for the senses, the botanic garden say that "you'll know you're getting close when you start to smell the delicate aroma of rotting cabbages."
Or if you prefer, "a dead rat next to a rotting fish." Sounds wonderful!
But the "total stinker" is apparently irresistible to the flies that pollinate it.
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The gardeners at Cambridge Botanic Garden say "it's very rare to see it in flower outside its natural habitat".
This orchid is not the only plant that mimics the scent of something rotten, and the botanic garden is home to another pongy plant.
Its Titan arum plant most recently attracted hundreds of visitors in 2017 when it bloomed - giving off an aroma of rotting flesh!
To the carrion flies and beetles that pollinate it in the wild, it smells amazing
Similarly, the so-called "corpse flower" did the same at Edinburgh's Royal Botanic Garden in 2015.
The plant does this to attract the flies and bugs that help pollinate it. Just like sweet smelling flowers attract bees and butterflies... but in much more stinky way!
'Dead fish and some rotting hamburgers'
Hold your nose!
When the world's smelliest flower bloomed at San Diego's Botanical Garden in the US last year, its CEO Ari Novy said:
"It smells a lot like you saved up your dirty laundry clothes for a couple of weeks. You put them in a garbage bag. You also threw in some dead fish and some rotting hamburgers.
And then you put that all by the side of the road somewhere really warm."
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