‘Giant shapeless penis’ plant that smells like rotting flesh blooms in the Netherlands

A giant ‘penis plant’ has bloomed for the first time in the Netherlands.

The Amorphophallus gigas - which literally translates as ‘giant shapeless penis’ - became fully erect at Leiden’s botanical garden at the end of February, followed by a second plant days later.

These eye-catching species only flower for two days, and are now looking rather limp in the garden's Tropical Glasshouse.

Few botanical gardens have this species, which is native to Indonesia’s Sumatra island, in their collection.

“We were very lucky, because we had not one, but two specimens in flower at (almost) the same time,” a spokesperson for Hortus botanicus Leiden tells Euronews Green via email.

“This gave visitors the unique opportunity to view this plant in flower for double the time, because the flowering time on this species is very short.”

You can still see most of the ‘inflorescence’ - the complete flower head of the Amorphophallus gigas - in Leiden.

But the rare tropical plants have withered from their fleeting glory when they stood tall at more than three metres. And another striking sensory feature has diminished too: their pungent smell, likened to rotting flesh.

“When it flowers it emits a very foul scent, meant to attract flies, which are their pollinators in the wild,” explains the garden spokesperson. “It is supposed to resemble the scent of carrion, and can be compared to the scent of a dead mouse (but much stronger).”

As the first Amorphophallus gigas specimen reached full bloom on 1 March, the Hortus’s head of horticulture Rogier seized his chance.

Armed with pollen from a previously flowering penis plant (the garden has a whole collection), he reached deep down into the sheath-shaped bract (known as the spatha) to pollinate the female flowers