Plug your noses, the corpse flower is blooming at Gustavus

Jun. 9—In all its foul-smelling glory, the aptly named corpse flower at Gustavus Adolphus College is blooming.

The rare plant started blooming Thursday afternoon and started to wilt about 12 hours later. Nicknamed Perrita, the flower is a sibling of the corpse flower named Perry, which was grown and first bloomed at Gustavus Adolphus in 2007 and is currently dormant. A third sibling, named Gemini by the students, also lives at the Nobel Hall greenhouse and is in its flower stage.

The attraction of the plant is not the crimson inside that is revealed upon blooming, but the famously terrible smell it produces when it opens.

Brian O'Brien, a Gustavus chemistry professor who oversees the growth of the corpse flowers in the university's greenhouse, told a story of a student who told him what reminded him of the plant's smell.

"He had an animal of some kind die inside the wall, and when he smelled it, it reminded him of the smell from the corpse flower," O'Brien said. "It's truly a terrible smell."

Stephanie Ash, the senior director of editorial content at Gustavus, provided a collection of descriptions of Perry's smell by people from previous years, which range from "dead mice in a wall" to "a dirty diaper left in the car for two weeks" to "ruminations of an angry God."

Gustavus student Sydney Noel also created a TikTok with Perrita for the university's page, doing so with her nose shielded by her shirt against the plant's stench.

Gustavus has hosted visitation events in the past when a corpse flower blooms, and thousands of people have come in to see and smell the flower. But due to Perrita's bloom taking place outside of the school year, there isn't sufficient staff to put on a public visit as in previous years.

Instead, the public is welcome to come and see it for themselves at Nobel Hall during weekly business hours. Visitors will be able to see Perrita in bloom through the greenhouse window on the third floor of Nobel Hall, but entrance to the greenhouse is not guaranteed due to the staff shortage.

Scientifically named Amorphophallus titanum, the corpse flower is found naturally only in the tropical jungles in Sumatra, Indonesia. The plant is endangered according to the International Union for Conservation of Nature, with the driving force of the endangerment being logging and deforestation of its natural habitat.

O'Brien first received the seeds in 1998 after the plant species faced endangerment. Seeds were dispersed to various botanical gardens and universities around the country, and a few wound up in the hands of O'Brien.

Live webcam footage of Perrita's progress can be found at this link: http://gustavus.edu/biology/titanarum/