I have always wonder about people who grow orchids that when they flower smell like rotting meat.
They are called carrion flowers. For the most part, they are richly colored with maroon speckles. I have Trias picta, which looks like a three cornered Stapelia. Fortunately, I don't smell anything from it. If you're not satisfied with just the color, there is Pths. ornata, which also has little fake maggots hanging off it. They wiggle! There are other flowers in the Stapelia group which smell to people exactly like cheese, but they don't fool a dog.
I once tried to grow Cochleanthes discolor. Come to find out the flowers contain eucalyptol, which I'm allergic to. They smell like mouthwash.
Then there's Masd. decumana. Cordelia Head says that when it is in bloom, people going through the greenhouse look at the bottom of their shoes to see what they stepped in. I was once corresponding with a bonsai grower who had a Coprosma kirkii. When I told him what Coprosma means, he answered, "I wondered where that smell was coming from."
I think Ficus carica came up here once. Sometimes there is a blue-green oxygen fixing bacterium that lives symbiotically inside the leaves. If it does, when the sun is shining the tree smells as if you forgot to clean the litter pan.
Aren't plants fun?
Iris
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