One person entered the lush, green, Victorian-era greenhouse and smelled rotting eggs. Another said the odor evoked the memory of dissecting a dead bird. A third compared it to a stinky diaper baking in the sun. "I was expecting it to smell bad, but it smelled genuinely like rotting flesh," said Nyx DelPrado, a first-year student at Mount Holyoke College who visited its Talcott Greenhouse this week to see the blooming of a corpse flower. "Its name is accurate," DelPrado added with a laugh, nose wrinkled. The corpse flower, or Amorphophallus titanum, is a rare tropical plant known for its foul odor. It's native to the rainforests of Sumatra and blooms infrequently and for only a brief window, releasing a pungent scent meant to mimic decaying flesh and attract pollinators such as flies and beetles. Nicknamed "Pangy," the plant first bloomed at Mount Holyoke College in 2023, and its latest appearance has once again drawn crowds eager to witness—and smell—the fleeting spectacle, the AP reports.
What appears to be a single bloom is actually an enormous inflorescence, a cluster of many tiny flowers at the base of a tall central column called the spadix and surrounded by a deep purple, velvety spathe. Although the towering inflorescence withers after a few days, the same plant survives underground and can bloom again in future years. Tom Clark, director and curator of the Mount Holyoke College Botanic Garden, said the plant's infamous odor serves an important evolutionary purpose and has inspired a wide range of descriptions from visitors. "A few people who have come in since have described the smell as being unbearable, tangy, like a trash can—it's overwhelming," Clark said. "But that odor is there for a purpose. It's there to attract pollinators, flies in particular."
The timing of corpse flower blooms is difficult to predict, often following years of dormancy. Over the past six weeks, Pangy grew rapidly, at times shooting up several inches a day before unfurling. The flower finally opened overnight Monday, and he and other staffers were met with its powerful scent as soon as they got to work the next day. "Walking through the front door, we could smell it," he said. "As we walked back to the greenhouse where it's growing, the smell became stronger and stronger. It was just overwhelming—literally unbearable—to be back there with it. If you weren't aware of this plant and walked into the greenhouse, you'd say, 'What died in here?'"
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