Kew unveils a stinker

Thousands of visitors to Kew Gardens will today witness the spectacular emergence of the biggest and smelliest flower in the world.

It is an extremely rare natural phenomenon that has been achieved after six years of loving cultivation, and for devoted botanists with a strong stomach, it is well worth waiting for.

The crimson giant of the flower kingdom, the Amorphophallus Titanum, has burst into flower and is giving the "sexual performance of its life".

The fleshy sheath has split open within the last few hours to reveal a blood-red interior. The down side of this botanical marvel is that it is accompanied by a revolting stench which has filled the tropical zone of the Princess of Wales Conservatory. The aroma has been described as a mixture of rotting flesh and excrement, earning the eight-foot monster the name "corpse flower".

Despite the smell, however, up to 50,000 people are expected to travel from across Britain to see it, as they did in the mid-Nineties when a previous specimen flowered. The plant grows wild in the rainforests of Sumatra. Its huge red flower is an irresistible invitation to bees and carrion flies to venture inside.

Two of Kew's horticultural team, Greg Ringwood and Phil Griffiths, will attempt to fertilise it using pollen flown in from America and Germany.

Anyone wishing to see the flowering should be quick off the mark. After about three days, exhausted by its endeavour, the flower will begin to wilt.

"Sir David Attenborough is fascinated by the thing," said a Kew spokesman. He visits the gardens regularly to check on its progress. "It is such an unusual plant - rare even in its native Sumatra. So rare in fact that even Sumatrans have been coming here to look at it."

The pongy giant lily first blossomed under cultivation in England in June 1887. Another plant bloomed in 1926 to wide attention. Prior to the last 1996 flowering there had been no blooms for 33 years. Kew's latest specimen weighs 165lb.