Giant waterlilies and smelly flowers

This is really old news but I've only just caught up with it. The BBC has teamed up with YouTube and now has a site dedicated to showing short clips of its own programmes. Browsing through them the other day I came across a collection of clips, each 2-4 minutes long, from documentaries by David Attenborough, many of them from his series The Private Life of Plants. Two particularly caught my attention - one about the Giant Waterlilies of the River Amazon (with super time-lapse photography), and another about the Titan Arum. The photo above shows the water lily leaves, and was taken by my son on holiday at Lake Maggiore some years ago.

Neither of the two are exactly the sort of flower I could put on the balcony - the waterlilies have leaves six foot across and the Titan Arum a flower which is nine feet high - with a smell that I think the neighbours might well complain about. Luckily for us, if not for David Attenborough, smell doesn't come over on video. Happy viewing.