Daily Dose Blogger Bios
What the...?
Look what I bought a couple of days ago! Pretty cool flower, isn't it? You know I love the unusual and the exotic - and I had a thing to go to and I thought wow - this flower is going to look awesome in my hair. (Being latina, I like to wear flowers up there. It's a cultural thing, like having your ears pierced at birth) So yesterday, I was thrilled to see that the flower was still big and gorgeous. Insta hair-do. But as the day progressed, I started noticing an unusual amount of big, blue/green flies in and around my kitchen (I hung the flower just outside the sliding doors, and I always keep them open so the minions can run around and make mischief). And then I caught a whiff. What the hell was that? Yup, my hair accessory. Flies were buzzing all over it... and big ones, not your average, everyday, dainty housefly. I stepped closer and the smell was - unappealing. To say the least.
I lookes it up, and it is a Stapelia grandiflora, common name - well take your pick - carrion flower, Zulu giant, giant toad plant, starfish flower, dead horse flower... the list goes on. It is pollinated, obviously, by bottle flies. The scent is decsribed in various texts as - spoiled chicken, putrid flesh, an open drain, roadkill, old blood ... you get the picture. I still love it, I'm just moving it away from my kitchen door. And I definately didn't wear it in my hair! Can you imagine if I'd had a cold and couldn't smell it? I would have pinned it near my chignon, and all night I'd be covered in flies, stinking like a decomposing racoon! That's me, always making an impression...
That's hilarious, Ivy. Recently there was this really stinky Corpse Plant that blossomed in the Brooklyn Botanical Garden. My friend Melissa got some video of it...
http://specialhead.blogspot.com/
That is a really beautiful Amorphophallus. There is one here in LA at the Huntington Gardens, and it bloomed about 8 years ago, but it wasn't anywhere near as pretty - I think it's because they had the thing growing out of a 5 gallon paint bucket. Here it was, this famous plant - people were waiting in line for hours to see (and hopefully smell) it, it was on the news... there was such a build up to the viewing... and then you walk into this beautiful room in a replica of a victorian greenhouse - and the plant is sitting in the middle of the room in a paint bucket.
It's so funny how anxious people were to smell something horrible. That's all anybody would talk about -"Did you smell anything?", "It smelled like meat!", "Your feet smell much worse than that plant", "I couldn't smell it! Damn!".
Oh my god! That's hilarious--it really is a good thing your powers of sniffing were up and running!