Never mind that it’s spring break; the rare “corpse plant” that’s currently blooming in a greenhouse at the corner of Tower and Judd Falls roads has been attracting huge crowds. The plant flowered at about 2 p.m. on Sunday, March 18; by that evening the crowds were lined up around the block, as visitors waited more than an hour to inhale the odor of putrefaction that emanates from the tropical plant. “Last night it was very strong rotten cabbage,” noted CALS communications specialist Ellen Leventry ’95 around noon on Monday, when the line was still snaking through the building, “and today it’s more dead fish.”
One of just 140 such plants to bloom in recorded history, Cornell’s Amorphophallus titanum—if you’re wondering about the inspiration for the Latin name, just take a look at the thing—is flowering for the first time at the age of ten. The five-foot-tall specimen has been nicknamed “Audrey Three” in honor of characters from the musical Little Shop of Horrors. The University let visitors vote on its official moniker via Facebook and paper ballot, the choices being Big Red, Uncle Ezra, and Wee Stinky. (The latter, in honor of the campus stream known as Wee Stinky Glen, won with more than 50 percent of the vote.)
In addition to drawing throngs of eager viewers (and sniffers), the flowering has presented the chance for research into the chemistry of odors. “Sense of smell is really subjective,” plant biology grad student Gwynne Lim said as she took measurements on Monday. “To me it smells like bleu cheese, but to my friend it smells like burned broccoli.” In the wild, the plant—which shifts from female to male during its two-day blooming cycle—uses its noxious scent to attract carrion insects to serve as pollinators. During its female phase, Cornell’s specimen was hand-pollinated by samples from a plant that bloomed at Binghamton University in 2010.
Asked why the plant had caused such a stir, plant biology grad student Monica Carvalho called it a striking example of the precision of the pollination process and the symbiotic relationship between plants and insects. Lim put it more succinctly: “It’s big, it’s beautiful—and it’s weird.”
— Beth Saulnier