This week’s Plant of the Week specimen is one of the wildest varieties!  The Corpse Flower is the world’s largest unbranched inflorescence, and is extremely rare and endangered in its native habitat, the jungles of Sumatra. However, if you are ever lucky enough to be wandering Indonesia and stumble across one of these beauties, or perhaps more likely visiting an arboretum or university with one in bloom, you will want to have a nose plug handy.

The Corpse Flower gets its name from its distinct aroma, which is reminiscent of a dead body.  Seeing as how we tend to relate flowers with sweet smells that attract honey bees (SAVE THE BEES), hummingbirds, and the like, you may ask why in the dickens would a flower smell like a deceased human?!  Fascinatingly enough, the rotting smell does in fact attract this plant’s pollinators, mainly flies, in a rather ingenious way. The Corpse Flower not only smells like rotting flesh, it mimics the temperature of a human body as well. The spadix (the tall skinny part in the middle) heats up to a human’s body temperature when it blooms to emulate a fresh carcass – a fly’s favorite treat! Further proof that Flower Power is real – they are amazing organisms!  A wonder of the plant kingdom, you can read more about the Corpse Flower (which, as usual, I HIGHLY recommend you do) HERE.

For the true plant geeks out there, here is a time lapse of the Corpse Flower named Jesse at Ohio State blooming.