John Borrette with the deeply malodorous Amorphophallus konjac, also known as the stink lily.
Flowers are often admired for their scent but a large lily flowering in Northland gardens is stretching the distinction between perfume and pong.
It's the lewd, crude, putrid Amorphophallus konjac, commonly called the stink lily - a drab purple to russet-hued spire of a lily thrusting out of the ground
in this season and making its presence known by an odour most often described as rotting flesh. Or, as one Whangarei gardener described it, 'dog-do' and 'dirty dog'.
We won't gild the lily too much, particularly as this one has gone over to the dark side, but reasons to love the bizarre, revolting smelling plant include some other names it's known by: the devil's tongue, voodoo lily and elephant yam.
It's either fairly rare or possibly simply unpopular because of its stench but the stink lily does well in sultry Northland. It made the national news in recent days because of a more cossetted specimen flowering in the Wellington Botanical Gardens, and the species made international news in 2010 when one flowered outdoors for the first recorded time in Britain, on the Isle of Wight.
Bertie and John Borrette have a love/hate relationship with the lilies that thrust up through their Vine Town garden at this time of year.
