00:00Well, it's starting to actually set in, Joe, I have to say.
00:06I'm getting notes of boiled cabbage, maybe a bit of body odour, and the scientists on
00:13the ground here have confirmed that that is not just my armpits, that is the corpse flower
00:17itself.
00:18Too much detail, Sean.
00:22But as you can see, the corpse flower behind me is starting to blossom and bloom.
00:28This is an event that many people have been anticipating over more than a week and a half
00:32now.
00:33And that anticipation has led to some pretty unhinged action in the comments section of
00:39the livestream as people from around the world watch this plant.
00:45She's known scientifically as Amorphophallus titanum, but to her many fans, she's Putricia.
00:53And that's led to a massive sensation and just massive lines outside for people who've
01:00come down upon hearing that she's finally starting to bloom.
01:03For the team here at the Botanic Gardens in Sydney, they say they're just delighted that
01:09this plant that they've raised is bringing people joy.
01:12It's brought the teams together.
01:14I've met people in the organisation I've never even met, so it's brought us together internally
01:20in the organisation and I think the whole of Sydney and maybe the world if you're looking
01:25at the feeds.
01:27And Sean, just in terms of if people have just tuned in and they're kind of not aware
01:32of what's actually going on, what's happened with the blooming?
01:35Are there kind of two petals and they're opening?
01:39And has that kind of happened significantly just while you've been there?
01:45So we've been on Putricia watch, as the many thousands of people online have, and we saw
01:52on the live stream that she was beginning to bloom this afternoon and raced down here
01:58to cover it.
01:59And sort of speaking scientifically about this plant, while it does really stink, it's
02:04an evolutionary advantage that this plant has developed over time.
02:10Scientists say some of the chemicals that are in its smell are also found in things
02:14like sweaty socks, rotting fish, even faeces.
02:18And that's something that it does to attract insects to it so that it can, to help with
02:25its reproduction and pollination process.
02:28For Putricia behind me, the Royal Botanic Garden staff will be intervening in that process
02:33later tonight.
02:34They've only got an hour, sorry, they've only got 24 hours of her blooming to do so.
02:39They're going to try and then give her a bit of help to reproduce and create some offspring
02:45for Putricia, which will then go into conservation projects around the world.
02:50Because this plant is actually endangered in the wild.
02:53It's native to West Sumatra in Indonesia.
02:56And there's estimated only a few hundred left in the wild.
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