VonEvilstein

I've seen the one in Leiden - I used to live some three or four hundred metres from it.
[outrageous French accent] It's very nice. [/outrageous French accent]

Immaculate Deception

Lmao!

There is one at UW-Madison. It bloomed last year and the news stories were amusing because the visitors were making all sorts of faces because of the smell.

I wish that I had gone to see it. Good for you, Gurdur, that you don't have to be like me, having that "I wish I would have..." syndrome.


ID

trekbette

That's because the flower is the sex organ of the plant.
I remember that from somewhere in my murky memory of high school science.

Does the flower have a scent?

godfry n. glad

Yes, indeedy, folks... Flowering season is the marker of the great vegetative sex orgy. Plants indiscriminately mating with any and all of their own species, sometimes beyond. Wanton public displays of engorged sexual organs! Copious quantities of ejaculated seminal materials! Discernment and restraint literally thrown to the winds! Trans-species participation in the sex act!

....I'm surprised John Ashcroft hasn't covered it with a sheet.

Does the flower have a scent? [/QUOTE]

Yep. The article said it stinks. Sounds like fly pollination to me.

I do note, however, that all the people in the pictures seem to be interested, but not disgusted or repelled. I find it hard to believe that the scent of decomposing animal matter would allow such blase' responses from bystanders. No wrinkled noses... no covered faces. Mayhaps it produces the scent only at certain times? Anybody?

godfry

Wait...wait... After looking at the first photo again, I can say that the lad looks as though he might be holding his breath...or, preparing to blow chunks.

Gurdur

There is no scent when the blossom is closed.
There was not all that much scent anyway ---- while the smell of decomposing meat is not a Good Thing, I've met worse in my washing-up.

godfry n. glad

But...In the two pictures shown in this thread, aren't the blossoms open? In the second picture, there are several smilin' women, seemingly chatting pleasantly, as though nothing stank in their immediate presence.

Quote:

There was not all that much scent anyway ---- while the smell of decomposing meat is not a Good Thing, I've met worse in my washing-up.

Not that much scent? Well, then, the little (compared to this behemoth) Voodoo Lily outdoes the Titanic Alum in the stench department. For the three days of its full bloom, the Voodoo Lily smells like a rotting carcase. Very much like the rotting squirrel carcases my cat used to secret in the bushes.

Wash up? You're a clinical or forensic pathologist, perhaps?

I'm just nosy...

godfry

Immaculate Deception

The pollinators are carrion beetles of some sort. I don't recall the exact name.

ID

edit:
I just looked up last year's Capital Times (Madison newspaper) articles regarding it..."flesh flies" are also mentioned. Just wanted to add that in here for godfrey.

Gurdur

Part of the charm of women is their imperviousness to faux pas's, whether vegetable or human male.

No, just lazy.


One day I might redo my post on Sodom, Gommorah and the Dead Sea: The Single Man's Cooking Guide ---- Petrolyse, Carbonify, Salsify.

BTW, I have actually done a fair bit of pathology and human dissection ---- mostly brains, rather than bodies, thank goodness; but it did turn my stomach a fair bit.

One of my colleagues had a very stiff hair spliff ---- everytime he would bend over to peer in fascination at some little brain section, his hair spliff would go into the dish containing fragments and discards ---- then when he snapped his head back, little bits of brain tissue would go flying through the room.
Ugh.
Another collegue used to whine to me all the time about the fact I didn't need to do bodies much --- as a student, she said, she only got legs from really old people for dissection purposes, which meant the veins and arteries were so defunct from old age that the formaldehyde couldn't get through properly --- meaning the leg would really stink after a week or so.
No worries, indulge it.

I far prefer this kind of wide-ranging and (mostly) positive discussion to the norm around here.

Gurdur

Thank-you !!


I might put up my wildflower pix here in a thread for you and other people.

godfry n. glad

Sure! Make sure that Lone Ranger knows, too. He has a passion for wildflowers....

godfry