Rare endangered plant at Kew Gardens blooms for the first time in the UK – but it's only for 48 hours
Flowering in the Princess of Wales Conservatory at Kew Gardens, Pseudohydrosme gabunensis is as elusive as they come. It's never been displayed publicly at Kew before, as, until recently, there were just two plants in the collection.
Now, however, history will be made with this rare tuber, which has 'the smell of something decaying'. Although, the unpleasant odour actually helps this short-lived plant survive in the wild.
'When it reaches maturity, it starts to produce an odour, a distinct aroma. It smells like old socks,' Tom Pickering, head of glasshouses at Kew Gardens, tells The Times. 'It's a really unusual occurrence, and it's quite spectacular. It's a very strange flower. I wouldn't say it's strikingly beautiful, but it's very odd, with amazing colours and an amazing shape.'
With a brownish yellow outer and red interior, this unique, horn-shaped plant – native to Gabon in Central Africa – is classified as endangered on the International Union for Conservation of Nature's red list of threatened species, mainly due to habitat degradation and loss of habitat to urban expansion and agriculture.
In 2022, Kew was lucky to have three flowers in short succession. This enabled botanical horticulturists to successfully pollinate the plant and produce new seedlings, some of which were shared with Cambridge Botanic Garden.
Botanic gardens like Kew play an important role in the conservation of endangered plants in the wild. Think of it like an insurance policy – it means, in the worst-case scenario, if an endangered species goes extinct, there's the possibility of reintroducing the plant in the wild.
Pseudohydrosme gabunensis is much like the famous Titan Arum (commonly known as the corpse flower) which is in the same plant family and blooms just once every few years for only 24 hours.
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