# Our corpse-flower blooms!! **URL:** \ **Category:** Miscellaneous and Personal Stuff I Must Share\ **Created:** [May 28, 2011, 3:26pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/our-corpse-flower-blooms/583566 "2011-05-28T15:26:12Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 5\ **Page:** 2
**Author:** ![Jackmannii](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/jackmannii/32/311_2.png) [@Jackmannii](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Jackmannii)\ **Post date:** [May 30, 2011, 3:14pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/our-corpse-flower-blooms/583566/21 "2011-05-30T15:14:35Z")
Interesting how some weirdly beautiful flowers also smell bad. A case in point is the succulent [Stapelia](http://www.sciencephoto.com/media/134760/enlarge) (carrion flower), a genus that incorporates multiple fetid-flowered species. I once gave a friend one of these plants, which he kept in an office window. When it flowered (redolent of week-old fish) it was visited by flies. They also laid eggs in it, which later hatched into maggots. :eek: I later learned that he proudly told co-workers “I’m a father!”. Sometimes it takes an, um, unusual personality to truly groove on these plants. ---
**Author:** ![Jenaroph](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/j/e8c25b/32.png) [@Jenaroph](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Jenaroph)\ **Post date:** [May 30, 2011, 3:15pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/our-corpse-flower-blooms/583566/22 "2011-05-30T15:15:29Z")
> [@Malleus\_Incus\_Stapes](#): > > [Meet the coco de mer, queen of obscene](http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&biw=1003&bih=616&q=coco%20de%20mer&um=1&ie=UTF-8&tbm=isch&source=og&sa=N&tab=wi). Ahahaha; in one of the pictures listed, somebody put a pair of panties on it! ---
**Author:** ![levdrakon](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/l/49beb7/32.png) [@levdrakon](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/levdrakon)\ **Post date:** [May 30, 2011, 5:10pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/our-corpse-flower-blooms/583566/23 "2011-05-30T17:10:52Z")
Did the plant and animal kingdoms diverge before the development of sexual reproduction? It’s interesting how plants reproduce sometimes. ---
**Author:** ![Malleus\_Incus\_Stapes](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/malleus_incus_stapes/32/3293_2.png) [@Malleus\_Incus\_Stapes](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Malleus_Incus_Stapes)\ **Post date:** [May 30, 2011, 8:59pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/our-corpse-flower-blooms/583566/24 "2011-05-30T20:59:58Z")
The animal kingdom is more closely related to fungi than to plants, so probably. ---
**Author:** ![Simplicio](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/c37758/32.png) [@Simplicio](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Simplicio)\ **Post date:** [May 30, 2011, 10:24pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/our-corpse-flower-blooms/583566/25 "2011-05-30T22:24:14Z")
> [@levdrakon](#): > > Did the plant and animal kingdoms diverge before the development of sexual reproduction? It’s interesting how plants reproduce sometimes. Sexual reproduction developed before the advent of multicellular life, so it predates the divergence of all the macroscopic Kingdoms. The University of Vermont used to have a corpse-flower of some type outside the Geology building (maybe they still do?) In spring you’d get occasional wiffs of it from surprisingly far away. Took a while for me to figure out where it was coming from, for a while I thought I had gangrene or something somewhere, as I’d get occasional whiffs of it from widely seperated places on campus. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/our-corpse-flower-blooms/583566.md?page=1)