On the scent: Kew’s secret garden shows off smelliest plant in the world

Head to Kew's secretive Tropical Nursery to examine the titan arum which has 'one of the foulest odours in the plant kingdom'
Hello, petal: botanist Peter Boyce wearing a mask to protect him from the titan arum’s odour
Andrew McRobb

From the world’s smallest waterlily to one of its smelliest plants, the secretive Tropical Nursery at Kew grows the rarest and strangest of plants.

On Friday, the greenhouse, which is normally closed to the public, will open to visitors for the weekend-long Kew Science Festival.

Split into sections to recreate different climates, the facility shelters 10,000 species under 6,500 square metres of glass. Species are coaxed into flower, often over decades, to fill Kew Gardens’ public greenhouses.

One of the rarest plants is the world’s tiniest waterlily, nymphaea thermarum, which has pads just a centimetre wide. Visitors with a strong stomach can also examine the titan arum, the world’s smelliest plant. On the few occasions it blooms inside the glasshouse, the titan arum “produces one of the largest flowering structures and one of the foulest odours in the plant kingdom”, according to Kew. Botanists wear gas masks to examine it.

Greg Redwood, the gardens’ head of glasshouses, nurseries and display horticulture, said: “The Tropical Nursery is a behind-the-scenes hub of biodiversity. The nursery plays a key role in not only supplying the exotic plants seen on display in the glasshouses, but also contributes towards Kew’s vital conservation efforts and scientific research.”

The festival at the Royal Botanic Gardens will also feature tours of the Herbarium, where seven million plant specimens are preserved, and the Fungarium, which keeps more than 1,250,000 fungi specimens, including samples collected by Charles Darwin.

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