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Language: en

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Here at the Eden Project, in the world’s
largest rainforest in captivity,

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one plant has been storing up its energy for
years and years and years,

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and it’s just finishing releasing all that in one
disgusting 48-hour period.

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This is a corpse flower,
and it smells like death.

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It's a bit like a dead rat,
mixed with rotten fish.

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Some people describe it like a bin that hasn't
been cleaned out for maybe two or three weeks.

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It's the smell of decay.

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These plants use flies and beetles the way
many plants use bees: for pollination.

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The smell of death: that's
very attractive to flies and beetles

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looking for somewhere to lay eggs.

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These bloom only after it's managed to store
enough energy,

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and that can take anywhere
between 7 and 10 years.

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Titan arums bloom for just 48 hours.

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On the first night, it can only receive pollen.

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The second night, it releases pollen.
It cannot self-pollinate.

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Over time, evolution will move species towards
strategies

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with the greatest chance of reproductive success.

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And on the face of it, the corpse flower’s
strategy doesn't seem that good:

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just 48 hours every few years.

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I mean, surely a better idea would be reproduce
as often as possible.

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And there are a lot of plants that do that,
as anyone with hay fever knows.

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But there is another possible strategy:

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store up energy for years and years and years,

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and then burn it all in a couple of nights

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to send out a mating call so big that everyone
can smell it for miles.

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It uses heat to make the smell travel further.

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These plants are thermogenic. They create
their own heat.

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And they go up to around body temperature.

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It's able to send its scent way up above the
canopy layer of the rainforest,

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where it can catch a breeze.

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And then insects can smell one of these in
bloom over 3,000 metres away.

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It's the same temperature as a dying animal,

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and the smell is of rotting flesh.
And -- if you come in here --

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this colour, we normally see in the butchers'.

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This is the colour of flesh.

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So by many ways, it's trying to lure in those
flies and beetles,

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thinking that they've found a corpse.

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Which does just leave us with the question
of the smell.

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Now, I got here a few hours too late,

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it's apparently past its worst, but...

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...yeah. Yeah, okay. That's bad! That's...

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Thank you very much to the Eden Project for
inviting me here!

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They’ve got a YouTube channel
you can check out,

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and they are open year round in Cornwall,
in the south west of England.

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