Is the “Stinking Corpse Lily” One of Nature’s Jokes or an Example of its Genius?

Indigenous to Sumatra and Borneo, the “Stinking Flower” refers to two separate species: the Titan Arum looks like an inverted mushroom, and the five-petal Rafflesia (‘Stinking Corpse Lily’) holds the title as the largest single blooming flower. The first of these reaches a height of 13 feet. These are no shrinking violets!

The Stinking Corpse Lily only blooms once a decade and lasts for barely a day. It attracts people from all over the world who eagerly await this phenomenon. Anyone who sees it is both mesmerized and repulsed not only by the sight of it—it looks like raw meat—but by the smell that has been widely described as “dead rat”. That foul smell comes from a combination of 30 chemicals that in fact mimic the odor of decomposing flesh.

One unfortunate young man working at a plant nursery just as it was blooming, had this to say about his experience: “It’s impossible to describe the stench, it stuck to my t-shirt on the ride home and smells 10 times worse than rotting animal carcasses. I’m glad it closed up a short while.”

And this is Nature’s genius, insects are irresistibly attracted by decomposing matter, and these stinking flowers call them from far and near, in the process spreading the flower’s genetic material all over the rain forest where it thrives. Its blooming is so unpredictable, that seeing the world’s largest, most mysterious and smelliest plant is a once in a lifetime experience. Maybe you can add this to your bucket list? If so then you’ll need to head for Malaysia, to Sarawak’s Gunung Gading National Park, Sabah’s Mount Kinabalu and the Rafflesia Forest Reserve near Kota Kinabalu to see the ‘Stinking Corpse Lily’. Happy travels!