WHAT A STINKER!

Visitors at the Cambridge University Botanic Garden were recently greeted by a rather odd odour. According to officials, bulbophyllum phalaenopsis, a rare orchid collected from its natural habitat in Papua New Guinea, had been flowering at the garden, giving off a “delicate aroma of rotting cabbages”.

Although visitors turned up their noses at the smell, garden officials say, “To the carrion flies and beetles that pollinate it in the wild, it smells amazing”. The orchid is known as an epiphyte – a plant that grows on another plant but gets its own nutrients from the surrounding air and rainwater.