Rare flower blooming

BOGOR (JP): A rare plant called bunga bangkai (corpse flower), Amorphophallus titanum, at the Bogor Botanical Garden is blooming, and the flower, which has a strong odor, has reached 2.9 meters high.

Unfortunately its growth is not normal.

"The bloom is not as perfect as it was before. We don't know why this is so," Yuzammi, a research staffer said on Thursday.

The blossoming of the rare flower, that began on Wednesday evening, has attracted many foreign tourists who flocked to the Bogor Botanical Garden on Thursday.

A staffer said usually the garden only receives about 1,000 visitors, but on Thursday they had more than 1,500 visitors, including 100 foreigners from England, Switzerland, France, the Netherlands, Germany, Japan, Korea and Saudi Arabia.

The flower, discovered by Italian botanical expert Odordo Becacari in 1878 in Lembah Anai, West Sumatra, has only bloomed twice, in 1994 and 1997. The garden has had the plant since 1915.(21)