The Flower That Smells Like Death
Vložit
- čas přidán 10. 09. 2024
- There's a titan arum - a corpse flower - blooming at the Eden Project in Cornwall. For years, it stores energy: and then for 48 hours, it heats up and sends out the smell of decay and death through the rainforest. And it stinks.
The Eden Project: www.edenproject...
or on CZcams at: / edenprojecttv
I'm at www.tomscott.com
or on Twitter at / tomscott
on Facebook at / tomscott
and on Instagram and Snapchat as "tomscottgo".
(Full disclosure: the Eden Project covered expenses for my trip to visit them, but had no editorial control or sign-off on the video!)
At 00:13 Tom walks past a photo of himself smelling the flower, further proof that Tom is clearly a Time Lord.
14th doctor confirmed?
A Tom Lord.
he's clearly ginger on the picture, so it can't be
he's an omnipotent supreme being
I surprised you didn't mention its technical name "Amorphophallus titanum", literally means "giant misshapen penis" from Ancient Greek, and was given the nickname "titan arum" to avoid the meaning behind the name.
Phallus. Hah
Hey dude, look at this flower, it's called a giant misshapen penis
Nice
FYI, "arum" is from Malayan words mean smells in English... This plant is native of Sumatra.
well the big top of the flower does look like a peen
48 hours every few years? This plant is getting more action than me
Same bro
2:39 Is that a picture of Tom smelling the flower in the Background whilst he's in a video smelling the flower?
This is a video from a future past
i have just noticed that :O
Continuity error
Guy's too bald.
At 00:13 also
Fun fact: botanophobia is the fear of plants. And these things are absolutely terrifying to look at
I agree with you about the corpse flower this flower is smells awful but it looks terrifying
Imagine just sticking your hand in there, fun times
@Ved Kolambkar Doubtful
...any chance you've seen a certain SNL sketch featuring Christopher Walken?
I've smelled one of these
Do not do it
Thank you for your sound advice
Your warning came too late for poor Tom though.
Can't say I've ever smelt this or rotting corpses, but I've been to an organic farm once and smelt the rotting plants they were using as fertiliser. I literally doubled over and gagged purely due to the smell. Therefore I think I can safely second this warning. Do not do it.
did u die?
+Imran Haque ya
im gonna do it if i ever get a chance
Fun fact: It's genus name, _Amorphophallus_, means "misshapen penis" in Latin.
That's hilarious XD
Are you sure you're not revealing too much about your tastes with that profile pic?
Ankaa Avarshina not-shapen penis would be more accurate
And "arum" is javanese for smells good
Even better: Misshapen _erection_
Bless you, Tom. You are a scholar and a gentleman for smelling that horrible thing so none of us have to.
Also, I graduated high school in 2007, and this ended up being one of the nominees for our class flower thanks to some of my completely ridiculous classmates. I am completely ridiculous as well because I voted for it, but alas, the winner in the end was the Cala Lily. It would have been kind of humorous if we had all been given artificial corpse flowers at graduation.
As my chemistry teacher used to say to my classmates, "Sonny boy... WAFT, do not INHALE."
Waft? What’s does that mean
@@realprisec 1) Why are you replying to a four year old comment
2) "In chemistry and other sciences, it is a term of laboratory safety. In "wafting" a person takes an open hand with the palm towards the body and moves their hand over the substance in a gentle circular motion so as to lift vapors of the substance towards the nose."
Archman 155 1) why are you replying to a 4 year old comment
@@realprisec what? your reply iss 5 hours old
Archman 155 it says 4 replies,(5 now) yours is one of them
It smells like death.
Only logical reaction: Take a HUGE SNIFF!
I love how nobody's talking about its name. The corpse flower is also known as "titan arum", or "Amorphophallus Titanium" to give it its full taxonomic classification.
That is latin for "gigantic malformed penis" and the shortened "titan arum" just means "giant penis".
wtf is wrong with me
i was waiting to smell it
and then when i was typing something i was like "wait its a video"
Don't feel bad. I once tried to Shazam a smell.
@@Havron _what_
@@Havron Imagine if it had worked though.
@@Infinite_Archive Billion dollar idea there, if anyone can work out how to do it...
Wha- Huh- Ah‽
So if it only flowers every 7-10 years, how does ever happen to open at the same time as another so that it can actually reproduce?
it uses insects for reproduction doesn't it ?
@@versusVSversus. but it cannot self pollinate since it accepts pollen BEFORE it makes pollen
@@deadchannel1745 oh, sure thing
Exactly my question, I mean, even if many are in the forest, what are the odds two bloom at the same time in that 48h window ?
@@Pomaufour if there are more than 1000 or so in an area, there's a good chance a corpse flower of the opposite sex is also blooming. I'm guessing its to reduce reproductive competition between flowers
Where does it store it's energy ?
My school recently had a Titan Arum bloom in an on-campus greenhouse. It was pretty incredible to see!
2:40: For a split second I thought that was a picture of Tom leaning over and sniffing one, behind Tom just after he had leaned over and sniffed one.
The specimen in the Botanical Garden in Copenhagen has bloomed every other year in 2012, 2014, and 2016.
"it got past it's worth" *takes a goos whiff* hilarity ensues
Is Tom turning into a silver fox? Still rocking that 90's centre parting tho.
And that, is something, you don't want to smell.
Of all the places I’d expect Tom to go I never expect the Eden project for some bizarre reason.
Evolution is crazy!
congrats on 500,000!
2:38 Tom, is that you on the promotional poster behind you?
I bet you it smells like middle school micro wave that hasn't been cleaned in over two years because the students are too disgusted to clean it and the janitor is useless
has no one noticed that tom is in one of the pictures on the ten years of blooming sign thing?
Hey Tom! Thanks for sharing this. We just bloomed one of these on June 14th, and put up a video about it on our channel as well. We had never seen the plant giving off that visible smoke until this year, and were quite fascinated with it!
It's 1:02am and I got school tomorrow. I got to stop watching Tom 😂
Satan's lapel flower is pretty big
Yep
I love that he sais it takes 7-10 years before it blooms again when in germany there is one that has since it has grown to sice bloomed yearly xD
You never talked how this plant goes about collecting this energy for tears, and how it is stored.. I have of course found out for myself, and found it moderately interesting ;)
Seriously this guy is one of the best content creators on this site. Concise, informative and interesting, even on topics i may be familiar with. Good on you, Tom Scott
Congrats on 500K subs tom!
Madone6 1 million now
2.6 M now........
So, wait... What's a rafflesia, then?
There are many flowers known as "corpse flowers". Rafflesia and this one are two of them.
Ahh... That makes more sense...
thank $DEITY there's no Smell-o-vision
Yeah, coz otherwise some 30 thousand houses smell awful right now
Am I the only atheist that isn't an insufferable internet shitbag?
+bkbj8282 are you from jehova's witnesses? Because you seem to be awfully keen on starting a conversation...
Mixter Muxter
So... when I identified myself as an atheist FIVE WORDS into my comment, that wasn't a clue to you?
bkbj8282 I think you missed the point...
Tom how the hell do you find all the amazing crap you are showing us?! I am blown away like every second vid you show and it is an amazing ratio to be mind blown!
Can't wait to give that as a present to someone
2:35 - Me smelling my own fart
I saw/smelled one of these in February. I thought "it's not that bad", it turns out the smell has a cycle and I saw it in the "stale beer, rotten cheese and old socks" phase.
OMG I was there yesterday. The flowers where there but they aren't flowering now. There just red lumps XD
If it stores a lot of energy for years, I wonder how well it burns.
Would it smell like a burning corpse then?
NO DON'T
I would carry this around in a zombie apocalypse and SURVIVE
it will attract zombies. BTW there r no zombies
You haven't seen my morning face :)
'We tell ourselves... that *we* are the walking corpse flowers' ^_^
Well, you would have makeup like a zombie... and then it might work
Sure, for 48 hours every decade or so.
This guys job title is storyteller, that’s the dream.
Videos like this show that it is a good thing they haven't invented smell-o-vision. :D
There's also a corpse flower at the Phipps Conservatory in Pittsburgh, PA. It's named Romero and it's set to bloom at the end of this month.
Even more fascinating about the Eden Project is that they're working on a 4MW geothermal power plant.
We have those plants in our city zoo. When they're blooming they'll open the premise until late night and people are waiting in line to see and smell it. They're actually paying to smell a dead rat. Why don't they just visit me and enjoy the smell of my flatmate's room? I guess it's basically the same. But well, the flower is one of the largest in the world and it's kind of nice...
Chicago's arboretum has one of these, and it just opened the other day.
Hi Tom! Thank you for this video! There is an article about the Eden project in our Face2Face English study book by Cambridge. This is a great video to add to this lesson!
a plant with basically human body temperature, i've seen everything, i'm off
There's one in Chicago at the botanical gardens. It bloomed last year. You should come and visit!
Nearly at 500k Tom - congratulations! Keep up the great work!
I’ve actually been to the Eden project and I actually told my friends about this. When they asked how I knew I told them about you so you now have new subs I guess.
absolute unit
Tom: *huge sniff at Amorphophallus titanum
The flower: "so you choosen death"
you did it again how could you!!!!!! you didn't say "and that is something... you might not of known" that's one of the best bits
Ah, humanity. Travel thousands of miles to smell death.
I'm too lazy so I just went outside and murdered somebody. Kappa
Every fact blew me away! Wow!
2:39 - shirtception! (Or something)
in indonesia we call that 'bunga bangkai' which is the direct translation of corpse flower, and we have that planted on monas tower in jakarta.
*flies away*
Tom Scott walking up to an alligator in an zoo exhibit: "...I got here to late...apparently the gators aren't quite has hungry as they used to be but hu..." sticks his head in an alligators mouth.
Just watched your subscriber count jump over 500,000- congrats!
so cool to see you right next to where i live
a timelapse of that process would have been awesome...
Smell of Keemstar's CZcams career
That plant has to be extremely unique .. something must grow in that little time that people can use for medicine or something.
This dudes timing is On Point 👍🏼
Reading a book and they talked about this. I was about to look it up but then BOOM!
Another very large and putrid flower is rafflesia arnoldii, which is the world's largest single flower. The amorphophallus titanum is larger, but it's more like a floral cluster, comprising many tiny individual flowers in the central column.
Endless forms most beautiful.
Flower that smells like a zombie: *exists*
Tom: SNIIIIIIFFFFFFF
the biggest laugh I've had from a Tom Scott video
i love the eden project. i used to live an hour a away when i was little, so i've been their about 10 times. i havent been for a while though
Meet Tom Scott, famous internet nerd and smart person, who just put his face right in the corpse flower and took a nice big whiff. Real high IQ move there...
Hey Tom, is that you from ten years ago on that guide board at 0:13?
I for one am glad that smells can not yet be projected via the internet.
The Danish Garden 'Botanisk Have', has a corpse flower, that has been flowering every second year for the past six years!
we have one in a local university. When the thing blooms, you can small it from the street a good bit away. I've smelled a decaying body on 2 occasions (dead neighbors rotting for a bit...) and it's not very far off.
a garden close to where we live has a corpse flower and i regret not going there to see it
(sniffs flower and retches) Oh, Tom, thank you for suffering for our entertainment.
That plants strategy sounds like my personal life
What an amazing design for a plant.
in copenhagen botanical garden they have made it bloom 3 times withing the last six years. so that is once every 2 years as of this year. they are hopefull that they will be able to make it bloom more often or atleast as often as they are doing now.
Just a note. Botanical Garden in Denmark, just had that type of flower bloom for the third time in six years. :P
That's kibut. It's originated from Sumatra. Raffles planted the sample at Bogor Botanical Garden in 1816s.
You're very close to 500k subscribers tom!
My mom tells me Venus fly traps smell bad, too bad I never had one of these 😈
By the ways, how tall do these plants grow?
They have one at the National Botanical Gardens in Washington DC. My wife and I got to see it while it was blooming not too long ago. I want to say the giant pot it was in was maybe 3-4 feet tall (hard to tell with the crowd that was there), and the top of the bloom was at least 8-9 feet, so from "ground" to top of the flower, 4-6 feet?
puppichow. Your mum lied to you, Venus flytraps don’t smell like anything.
I know exactly what he’s talking about. I sprout mung beans on a damp paper towel in my desk drawer. Very nutritious but they smell like death.
has anyone walked to the very top of the eden project. you will literally be soaked in sweat on cold days
I'm so annoyed, I was there recently.
Even with the thermal strategy mentioned, 48 hrs once every ~7 years still seems like far too small of a window to be viable. Assuming that whatever carrion insects that it attracts won't carry around its pollen indefinitely, this plant would need to rely on another of its own kind being ready to receive pollen within a similar 48-hr window once every 7 years as well. Even if you assume a (seemingly reasonable?) 96-hr viability timeframe for the pollen, that still requires an average of 639 other corpse flowers within the travel distance of the pollinating insects so that a second one (on the average) will bloom in time.
It worked for them this long why change it
Prime numbers of years are extremely common in reproduction in nature. Especially if the whole population does it at the same time.
It's a great way to avoid predation.
Ok but it WAS viable lmao it literally evolved into this has been like this for probably centuries on centuries
We also have this in Kiel, Germany at the University Greenhouse.
Its not pollinating right now though
Titan Arum: Is famous for smelling like a rotting corpse
Tom Scott: "Lemme stick my nose in there real quick..."
Tom Scott stopping to smell the flowers for youtube.
I've seen one of these flowers some time ago and it didn't smell that bad, but I guess I was too late. Still a fascinating plant! Nice video! :)
We had one of those bloom a couple of weeks ago here.
We have a corpse flower at Virginia Tech! It bloomed last year, so it'll be back in bloom in another four!
We have those at my university. Oddly enough one of them is blooming almost every year. They are very huge.
there's a lot of those in bengkulu province , indonesia. And there's also rafflesia arnoldi, which smell the same.
0:00 - 0:01 Is that a scrap metal dinosaur skeleton?
google "eden project skeleton sculpture"
MidtownSkyport Wow, thanks
www.edenproject.com/visit/whats-here/giant-sculpture-made-of-waste That would be WEEE man
Kieron Quinn Thanks Kieron, this adds a lot more context.
They also have a giant bee!
God, I think I can smell it from here!