The team focused on unique fog-fed oases known as lomas. These habitats are home to around 1700 plant species, including the poorly researched perennial Tillandsia. The researchers worked with paramotorists, who fly powered paragliders through the skies, in the largely unexplored regions of Lomas de Amara y Ullujaya. The paramotorists were trained in botanical sampling to identify, tag and collect samples from areas deep in the otherwise inaccessible desert. They returned with several Tillandsia plants – the aim is to collect, identify, map and carry out DNA analysis to gain insight into their historical isolation and potential gene flow between populations.

The study demonstrates a faster and more environmentally friendly alternative to four-by-four off-road vehicles to reach outlying areas, reducing carbon dioxide emissions with negligible impact on the fragile lomas. “To actually send someone to an area that would take so long for us to travel to is incredibly exciting,” says Moat. “To some degree, in the future, we will never know we were there, except for the specimens we now have at Kew.”

Article amended on 11 October 2024

We have clarified the location flown over as part of this study

This stunning but stinky bloom of a corpse flower unfurled on 18 June at the , in London, but it will only be around briefly – they tend to last for just 24 to 36 hours.

The corpse flower (Amorphophallus titanum), also called the , is so named because its stench is like that of rotting flesh. This odour can emanate from it so powerfully that it travels for hundreds of metres. The smell is tailored to attract unusual pollinators like flesh flies and carrion beetles to the short-lived bloom, and must be strong enough to do its job in the short time the plant flowers, because it might not do so again for many years.

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Technically, the bloom, which can reach 3 metres high, isn’t a single flower, but many. The inner flower spike, or spadix, looks like a yellow obelisk as it emerges from a pleated purple collar called the spathe. An inflorescence, or cluster, of flowers lies in a protected zone between the spathe and spadix.

If you happen to see – and smell – one, the odour might not be what you expect. It can vary across the short life of the bloom and aside from producing the whiff of rotting meat, it could smell like the equally delightful excrement or warm trash.

The rare plants are endemic to the rainforests of Sumatra, Indonesia, but many botanical gardens around the world cultivate them, both for their beauty and for the crowds they draw when they flower. The first time one is known to have flowered outside Sumatra was at Kew in 1889.