Let a thousand stinky blossoms bloom: how Australia became the world’s corpse flower destination

Australian collections of the endangered and notoriously unpredictable flowers have popped off in recent years, as ‘personas’ like Putricia, Stinkerella and Smellanie prove a hit with nosy spectators Sign up for climate and environment editor Adam Morton’s free Clear Air newsletter here From little things glorious fetid things grow. Corpse flower blooms, once vanishingly rare, are becoming more commonplace in Australia. More than a dozen bloomed across the country in 2025, including the inf...

By Petra Stock and Josh Nicholas