The amorphophallus titanum is named for its foul stench, which some people describe as the scent of rotting flesh, while others notice faint notes of garlic, sweaty socks, or even rotten food.
According to botanist Lauren Greig of the CAS in San Francisco, the stench is basically intentional.
“It’s kind of imitating the smell of kind of a dead carcass to kind of get all the flies to come and interact with it, pick up pollen, and then take that pollen to another flower that it might investigate due to its smell,” she said.
It was Mirage, the corpse flower that was donated to the CAS in 2017, seeing its first bloom. Since 2020, it has been kept in the museum’s rainforest display.
