SPECTACULAR LILY, BUT FOR THE PONG: Paul Mitchell was a brave man to get up close to this stink lily, because the smell of rotten fish was all-pervasive.
Mr Mitchell said his neighbour was given a bulb four years ago, and yesterday's bloom was its one-day wonder.
What the neighbour did not
know, however, was that the bulb has a carrion flower it repels humans but attracts flies.
On Saturday night. the lily opened, and when the Chronicle called at 3.30pm yesterday, the bloom was beginning to wilt.
Flies, however, were abundant, attracted by the smell.
The Chronicle's assistant editor, Colin Rowatt, said he had half a dozen of the malodorous plants in his garden.
When he realised they weren't a welcoming fragrance at the back door, he tried to dig them out. But it wasn't an easy job, he said, and he is still digging them out.
FOOTNOTE: The stink lily (Dracunculus vulgaris) is a member of the family Araceae, like the arum lily, which it resembles.
A native of the Balkans and surrounding regions, it is also known as the black arum and the voodoo lily. In parts of the United States, where it is now common, it is also called the Viagra lily due to its phallic shape rather than any medicinal properties it may possess.
Dracunculus is pollinated by flies, which it traps overnight in its inflorescence and releases in the morning, covered in pollen.
The plant has been naturalised in New Zealand since about 1965.
