Name: The Stink Of The Corpse Flower, Explained | NPR's SKUNK BEAR
Uploaded: 2021-10-05T19:44:30.000Z
Duration: 3 min 42 s
Description: VoiceTubeの動画で発音を聞きながら英語表現を覚えよう！学べる英語：

The United States Botanic Garden is a verdant sanctuary for congressional staffers playing hookey

But arguably the garden's biggest star is

the Amorphophallus titanum also known as the corpse flower.

It smells disgusting - like rotting flesh.

And when my editor heard that it was about to bloom for the first time in years

If you want to imagine how bad the corpse flower smells, consider the notes of its putrid perfume

It starts, like many flowers, with the sweet odor of benzyl alcohol

I joined hordes of people of people who have flocked to the garden to get a whiff

But the corpse flower won't start stinking until it opens - maybe in a few hours, maybe in a few days

It's in no rush - its been preparing for this moment for six years

Most of the time, it looks like an unremarkable tree

But underground, this potato thing - the corm - is stockpiling energy for the big stink

Year after year after year, the leaf sprouts and dies back

and the corm grows bigger and bigger until its ready to put out a strange new structure

and then comes the moment we've all been waiting for

"So how would you describe  this scent that we're experiencing right now?"

"It's sort of like an olfactory Rorschach test"

"A really nasty garbage can  that I haven't hosed out for a while"

"Or like funky, rotting cabbage or something"

That big column in the middle actually heats up like a Glade plug-in

"It already lives in steam, so it has to make just a bit more to get it up and out there"

So back to the question: why would a flower spend so much energy to smell this bad?

"It wants to be pollinated just like all other flowers"

It all comes back to the birds and the bees!

Some flowers seduce pollinators with sticky sweet nectar.

But a lot of insects just aren't into that -  they like rotting meat

and they're the pollinators the  corpse flower is trying to attract

"You see the collar, that spathe? It's rather slippery and waxy"

"but that smell is just too enticing and my gosh the heat -  a warm stinky steamy place to go"

"They drop down into the lower parts of the bucket..."

This is where the plant's actual flowers are -- rows and rows of them.

But there's no carcasses to be found, so the insects make their getaway

They crawl up that central column and along the way, old pollen rubs off

"Out they go! They smell the next party down the road and go to pollinate something."

There's another creature that the corpseflower has tricked into spreading its pollen

Because of its stinky charm, humans have helped it expand

from it's native range in Sumatra to gardens and conservatories around the world.

And please subscribe to our channel - we'll answer new questions every other Tuesday.

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The Stink Of The Corpse Flower, Explained | NPR's SKUNK BEAR

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