A rare phallus-shaped plant has flourished in a garden in the Netherlands. This is precisely why it is known as "penis plant", but its scientific name is Amorphophallus decus-silvae .
This is an event, as it is only the third time that this species has flourished in Europe since 1997 , according to the botanical garden of the University of Leiden, Leiden Hortus Botanicus, the oldest botanical garden in this country.
The plant is the size of a human person and smells like … rotten meat or decaying meat and is somewhat phallic in shape. After six years of growth, the plant showed a bud for the first time, which showed that it could soon flower. This was in the month of September.
Over the past month, the shoot grew to about 0.5 meters in height and its supporting stem is now 2 meters long.
It was on October 19 that it finally blossomed, exposing an upright structure at its center, according to the Leiden University statement. The structure is white and extends upward from a ruffled collar of purple foliage, known as the spathe.
It is not the same as the corpse flower, but they are related . Amorphophallus titanum also uses, like this one, the foul stench to attract flies and other pollinating insects, on whose legs and body the pollen that it pumps in large quantities adheres.
Image credit: Lex Van Lieshout
