Foul flower draws crowd

Corpse flower blooms at Gustavus

By Dan Nienaber

ST PETER — Fourteen years of careful cultivation came to a fuming fruition at Gustavus Adolphus College Saturday night, just in time to give mom a smelly treat for Mother’s Day.

“I think it smells like a dead animal, myself, but other people have their own interpretations,” said Brian O’Brien, the Gustavus biology instructor who planted the seed that on Saturday became a rare blooming “corpse flower.”

Scientifically known as the Titan Arum or Amorphophallus titanum, the plant gets its corpse flower nickname from the strong odor it gives off while in bloom. Emily Hoefs, manager of the Alfred Nobel Hall of Science greenhouse where the flower is located, compared the smell to dead minnows that have been rotting in a bucket for a few days.

Despite the stench, people lined up to view the flower, which is found naturally only in the tropical rainforests of Sumatra. Here are several written descriptions of what they said their noses encountered: Propane, rotten sauerkraut, chicken in the garbage during summer, a week old cat box and, simply, “poop.”

“It smelled rotten, but it wasn’t that bad,” said Bill Wever of Coon Rapids. “I almost expected to be thrown aback by it.”

He traveled to St. Peter with his wife, Mary, not knowing if the rare plant would be in bloom. They’d heard about the Gustavus corpse flower, believed to be the first to bloom in Minnesota, through the media and were curious.

Mary Nagarajan of Prior Lake learned the flower had finally bloomed through the college’s Web site, which includes three webcam views that are updated every five minutes and live audio and video feeds. She was with her husband, Subra, and sons, Max and Eric.

“This was my Mother’s Day plant,” she said after walking through the greenhouse.

More than 1,000 people visited the greenhouse between 5 p.m. and 11 p.m. Saturday night, said Stacia Senne, Gustavus assistant vice president of marketing. About 250 more people had viewed the plant by 10 a.m. Sunday morning. More than 5,000 visitors are expected to pass through the greenhouse doors before the official viewing hours end at 8 p.m. tonight.

“We’ve been getting visitors all week,” Senne said. “People have just been coming in and saying, ‘Where is the flower?’”

“Perry,” as the flower is known to the instructors and students who have cultivated it, was planted by O’Brien in 1993 after 20 seeds were shipped to him by James Symon, a doctor who had traveled to Sumatra to see the endangered plant. This is the first time the corpse flower has bloomed since it was planted, but it could bloom again in two or three years.

Many of the plants were donated to other greenhouses, including the Como Park Zoo and Conservatory in St. Paul, once they were large enough to ship.

O’Brien said he’s been surprised by the attention “Perry” the plant has gotten since the announcement was made last month that it would be blooming soon.

“I started here in 1985 and have never seen so many students with such an intense interest in one single thing,” he said. “It’s been a very surreal experience, probably the strangest thing that’s ever happened to me.”

Click to view a time lapse video of the corpse flower opening.