On Tuesday, Foster Botanical Garden’s "corpse flower" — for the first time since it was planted a decade ago — began smelling "like a dead cat."
At least that’s how John Martinez of Mililani described the distinctive odor.
His girlfriend, Brittney Lam of Kapahulu, stuck her face into the corpse flower’s spathe, a leaf that sheathes the plant’s main stem, and said the scent reminded her more of rotten meat — specifically "meat that’s been out for a long time. It really stinks. It’s just so gross."
Like other visitors to the gardens Tuesday who dared to take a whiff of Amorphophallus titanum — sometimes known as "the big stinky" or the "corpse flower" — Martinez and Lam just had to take a second, and third, whiff.
"It’s one of those things," Martinez said. "You’ve got to keep sticking your nose in there, it smells so bad."
The aroma should be even worse today inside Foster Botanical Gardens’ orchid conservatory, which is bordered by Vineyard Boulevard and Nuuanu Avenue in lower Nuuanu, said Scot Mitamura, a horticulturalist at the gardens who discovered the plant’s spathe opening for the first time Tuesday afternoon, followed by its telltale aroma.
Tuesday’s bloom was a rarity for Honolulu’s botanical community.
"My phone hasn’t stopped ringing," Mitamura said.
As flies began buzzing around the big stinky Tuesday afternoon, Mitamura was hoping the aroma would linger at least a couple more days.
"According to some records, they say (the smell) should last two to three days," Mitamura said. "Someone told me it’ll just last overnight, but I think it’ll be longer than that."
Two weeks ago the botanical garden’s Amorphophallus titanum was merely a 15-pound bulb in the ground that for the past 10 years had produced only an annual stalk that, along with its leaf, rapidly dried up and turned to material resembling burned paper, Mitamura said.
Then it did something for the first time in its life: It suddenly shot out a healthy-looking, green stalk that now stretches nearly 5 feet tall, along with an engorged leaf that began turning from green to red on Tuesday — a color nature designed to resemble raw flesh.
Amorphophallus titanum, an endangered species native to Sumatra in Indonesia, comes genetically armed to trigger an odor of decaying flesh and a leaf that turns a reddish, meatlike color to attract the carrion beetle for pollination, Mitamura said.
Now that it’s begun to mature, the corpse plant should emit its odor of decaying flesh every three to five years, Mitamura said.
As far as Mitamura knows, Foster Botanical Garden’s corpse flower is the only one blooming on Oahu. A much younger Amorphophallus titanum in the garden’s nursery is merely a bulb in the ground about the size of a pumpkin, Mitamura said.
The odor of rotting flesh emanating from a single corpse flower drew hundreds of new visitors to Hilo’s Pana‘ewa Rainforest Zoo & Gardens in April 2011.
And as the big stinky began to emit its distinctive odor Tuesday on Oahu, visitors began lining up to take a big whiff — and then another.
"It smells like a dead fish," said Bryan Wong of Kaneohe.
After sticking her face inside the corpse flower’s leaf a couple of times, Wong’s wife, Cheryl, finally identified its odor:
"It smells like a Porta-Potty," she said.
And then she put her face back inside the big stinky one more time.
