How great — and awful — is the corpse flower scent at NC State this year?
The corpse flower in bloom at NC State University isn’t only big and stinky. It’s ephemeral.
Its creepiest scent will probably dissipate by the end of Wednesday, when the flower’s petals start to close, the plant’s caretaker says. A tall, yellow structure in the middle, called the spadix, will likely remain upright only until Friday before collapsing.
Despite the short show, hype matches reality when you encounter the organism up close, visitors to a NC State greenhouse said Wednesday. That’s likely a good thing now that 2,000 people have signed up to encounter it in person this week.
Notes of roadkill and garbage juice don’t reach the nose immediately upon stepping into the Marye Anne Fox Undergraduate Teaching Laboratory. But walk toward the back of the plant and there’s no missing the stench.
“It definitely smells like something that has been dead for a while,” said Christy Batts, who has wanted to see one of NC State’s Amorphophallus titanum flowers since 2019, when it bloomed. “If this was in my yard, my alarm bells would be going off.”
Brenda Seiberling said she missed the flower’s short-lived bloom in 2019, too. So she made sure to sign up for a viewing as quickly as she could this year.
She compared the scent to what turned out to be an actual human corpse discovered in the woods near her house. But not that terrible.
“It’s not as pungent, if you will,” Seiberling said.
Janice Swab, a retired Meredith College botany professor, said the blooms of all kinds of plants grown at NC State are spectacular. But the showiness of Lupin, the nickname of the plant that is drawing crowds this week, excites people.
“It’s not more marvelous, it’s just bigger,” Swab said.
This is not the largest corpse plant flower that has drawn the curious to campus. This year’s bloom is 4 1/2 feet tall, compared to 6 1/2 feet seen in past years.
That’s because the plant took only two years to bloom this time, compared to four years previously, due to leaf damage it suffered while growing in the greenhouse. That limited the energy the plant had stored to produce a flower this year.
People will get a chance to see the big bloom themselves during 10-minute slots through Friday, if they have an appointment.
For those who can’t make it to Raleigh, NC State has set up a Lupin livestream. People can stay connected on social media too. On Twitter, follow the #Lupin2016 hashtag; on Instagram it’s @ncstatecals.
This story was originally published July 21, 2021 at 3:21 PM.