Rare "Corpse Flower" Smells Like Rotting Flesh

Stayton described the smell when the plant booms as “cooking cabbage and a dead rat in the wall, a mixture of the two,” adding, “It’s very foul.” The strong, unpleasant smell attracts the plant’s pollinators, flies and carrion beetles, which think it signals rotting meat.

clipped from bigthink.com Something stinks in Texas. A rare “corpse flower” is set to bloom any moment at the Houston Museum of Natural Science.  The nickname stems from the similarities the flower’s aroma shares with the stench of decomposing flesh.  A bloom is rare, and some plants can go ten to fifteen years and never bloom.