‘It smells like something died’: Flower known for it’s terrible odor on display in Wellesley

Something stinks in Wellesley, and it’s drawing visitors who are eager to get a whiff.

The Garden at Elm Bank is sharing a look at a rare botanical event. The blooming of a “Titan Arum,” commonly known as a “corpse flower.”

“It can do that once every five to seven years. In between, it puts up one leaf at a time, and it’s feeding a corm, strengthening a corm that’s in the ground. So, five to seven years strengthening, and then it will flower once again for 24-hours,” said James Hearsum, who works at The Garden at Elm Bank.

This is the first successful bloom flowering of this plant that’s on loan from the Wheaton College, and will only last a day.

The flowers are infamous for their striking size and pungent odor, which smells like rotting flesh.

The stinky smell is just a trick to help the plants pollenate.

“It’s doing that at attract Carrion Beetles. So the Carrion Beetles come in, they smell dead meat, looking for a party, they’ve hopefully got pollen on their back from another flower and they come in and they pollenate the female flowers,” said Hearsum.

But what do visitors have to say after getting a chance to smell it for themselves?

“It smells like something died, yeah. Any type of a living thing died, it has that. Same odor! I recognize it immediately!” Debbie Hararay said, a visitor of the flower.

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