A Fragrance Only a Fly Could Love

Not for the faint of heart, the corpse plant spews forth a putrid smell of death.

This huge plant, whose scientific name is Amorphophallus titanum, grows naturally only in the tropical rainforests of Sumatra, Indonesia. The scent of its flower is meant to attract insects that lay eggs in rotting flesh, like carrion beetles.

To create that odor, the plant heats up a sulfur-based compound in its flowering stalk. This stalk rises an impressive seven to 12 feet above the ground and can be three to four feet thick - making it the world's largest flower cluster. Blooming requires so much energy that the corpse plant can only manage it once every four to 10 years.

Europeans first encountered this stinky giant in 1878, and the Royal Botanic Gardens in England cultivated the first specimen ten years later. Only about 20 blooms have been witnessed on U.S. soil, starting with an exhibit at the New York Botanical Garden in 1937. A corpse plant in the Huntington Botanical Garden in California drew 76,000 visitors to its foul odor in 1999.

This past summer one of these rare plants bloomed in Virginia Tech's horticulture greenhouse. Botanists guessed correctly that the flower (shown above) would open on August 4^th, and over 1,000 visitors came to experience the stench. On August 13^th the bloom collapsed and died, which begs the question - does it smell worse living or dead?

-- LiveScience Staff

Credit: Holly Scoggins and Scott Rapier