The Worst Smelling Flowers In The World – Nature’s Bad Surprises

by Paul Ciocoiu · November 26, 2015

Not all the flowers delight us with their appealing perfume, despite our expectations. Nature remains a place bursting with surprises and, even though most of the flowers bewitch us with their fragrance, the very reason we grow them around and in the house, some of them strike a whole different note and, despite rich and vivid colors, spread a terrible smell which keeps both humans and pests away. Here are some of the worst smelling flowers in the world, embodying a quirky antithesis between colors and stench.

The first on the list is a plant whose name speaks for itself: the corpse flower. It goes without saying what type of smell it discharges. It is native to Indonesia and can grow up to 3 meters in height, being the largest inflorescence in the world. The only good news is that the flower’s bloom doesn’t last very long, only about 24 to 48 hours, after blooming only once every four to six years. The smell aims to attract flies and bugs to help pollination.

The worst smelling flowers – the corpse flower

Western Skunk Cabbage, scientifically known as Lysichiton americanus is a plant native to America mainly found in damp, marshy and wooden areas. This flower is a nice change from the others listed above that give a decaying and rotten flesh smell but it makes it to this list of world’s bad smelling flowers solely based on its ability to let off skunk-like odor to the entire surrounding that it is present in, this smell can also be found in the dried specimens of the flower.

The worst smelling flowers – the eastern skunk cabbage

They also call it the voodoo lily, stink lily or the black dragon just because of its vulgar smelling and looking bloom. Originally found in and around Greece, it has been introduced to the United States, most commonly on the West Coast in California, Oregon and Washington. Like with many of the flowers listed here, its stench is that of rotting flesh. The good news again is that the smell doesn’t last too long, only about a day.

The worst smelling flowers – the voodoo lily

It may look captivatingly interesting with its unique appearance. But despite that, hydnora Africana smells like feces which is an effective stink given that its pollinator of choice is the dung beetle. As if its reputation wasn’t bad enough, hydnora africana is also a parasitic plant that grows almost entirely underground except for its bloom. This is why biologists labeled it as fungus for many years, before discovering it is in fact a flowering plant.

The worst smelling flowers – hydnora africana

The last on our brief list is, believe it or not, a member of the orchids family, renowned for their spectacular flowers and attractive smell. Well, But the largest genus of orchids, Bulbophyllum, is also known to contain some real stinkers. More precisely, Bulbophyllum phalaenopsis, a hairy, pinkish-red flower from New Guinea, which also happens to smell like dead, rotting mice.