DEXTER, Mich. (WXYZ) — “Uh…death.”
“A compost pile.”
“Throw in some dirty gym socks.”
“Like rotting food in your refrigerator.”
“A dead deer. It’s like that times 10.”
Watch our report from before the flower bloomed:
There was a stream of people, like Josh Tye, who came to Dexter to catch the sight and the stench of the rare 24-hour bloom of the corpse flower.
“The flower is much bigger in person. I mean you look at it and you just look up and you’re just like, ‘Oh my gosh. It’s so big!’ And then you get the smell and you just get to admire the beauty of it,” says Tye.
I caught up with people like Larry Parish and his wife as they got their first impression.
"Alright, so we are seeing this for the first time…smelling it. Tell me a little bit about what you smell?"
“Smells a little pungent,” says Larry, who lives in Huron Township
Admittedly, I was a bit giddy myself.
I did not expect to, actually, get to see something like this in my lifetime, so I am so excited. 'Sniff sniff’ Oof. Stinky!
Even academics like Lisa Murphy, Greenhouse Coordinator at Michigan State University Plant Biology had to come to see it for themselves.
“Amorpha phallus titanium,” she calls it, the scientific name.
And where does it grow?
“Sumatra,” says Murphy.
“The name amorpha phallus means misshapen…phallus,” she says.
And I learned the stench wasn’t just in our heads.
“Their poor house here. There’s turkey vultures circling the house outside right now and the house is full of flies,” says Murphy.
For Kevin Hauser getting to this day has been a labor of love. He has nurtured the plant from its start seven years ago as an underground stem called a “corm.”
“It is the largest flower that has bloomed in Michigan. We think, globally, it’s the first to actually happen in a private residence,” Hauser says. “And it’s the second this year in the U.S.”
Impressive to be sure. Surprisingly, for its rarity. He didn’t act like getting the plant to flower was a herculean effort.
“I’ve told people that ask, you know, ‘You must be some master gardener.’ And I’m like this plant has been a lot easier to take care of than a lot of the other plants back here,” Hauser says.
So what advice does Kevin have for an aspiring corpse flower grower like me?
“Have a really tall roof in your house…and a lot of sunlight.”
Now I thought it must grow in something special but he said he makes his own soil mixture from what’s in his own backyard here in Michigan.
An exotic stinky beauty - and now I can check it off my bucket list.
