Mount Holyoke's Corpse Flower Blooms Again, Attracting Crowds with Foul Odor
Crowds have gathered at Mount Holyoke College's Talcott Greenhouse to witness the rare bloom of "Pangy," a corpse flower known for its powerful odor resembling decaying flesh. The plant, scientifically named Amorphophallus titanum, has drawn visitors from near and far who are eager to experience its notorious stench and fleeting beauty.
The Infamous Scent of Decay
Visitors to the lush Victorian-era greenhouse have described the odor in vivid terms. One person detected the smell of rotting eggs, while another recalled dissecting a dead bird. A third visitor compared it to a stinky diaper baking in the sun.
"I was expecting it to smell bad, but it smelled genuinely like rotting flesh," said Nyx DelPrado, a first-year student at Mount Holyoke College. "Its name is accurate," DelPrado added with a laugh, nose wrinkled.
Tom Clark, director and curator of the Mount Holyoke College Botanic Garden, explained that the plant's foul odor serves an important evolutionary purpose. "A few people who have come in since have described the smell as being unbearable, tangy, like a trash can — it's overwhelming," Clark said. "But that odor is there for a purpose. It's there to attract pollinators, flies in particular."
A Rare and Fleeting Spectacle
The corpse flower is native to the rainforests of Sumatra and blooms infrequently, often following years of dormancy. What appears to be a single bloom is actually an enormous inflorescence—a cluster of many tiny flowers at the base of a tall central column called the spadix, surrounded by a deep purple, velvety spathe.
Nicknamed "Pangy," the plant first bloomed at Mount Holyoke College in 2023. Over the past six weeks, it grew rapidly, sometimes shooting up several inches per day before finally unfurling overnight on Monday. The towering inflorescence will wither after just a few days, though the plant survives underground and can bloom again in future years.
"Walking through the front door, we could smell it," Clark recalled of the morning after the bloom. "As we walked back to the greenhouse where it's growing, the smell became stronger and stronger. It was just overwhelming — literally unbearable — to be back there with it. If you weren't aware of this plant and walked into the greenhouse, you'd say, 'What died in here?'"
Visitors Flock to Experience the Phenomenon
The spectacle attracted visitors who traveled significant distances. Michael Breton drove two hours and took a vacation day to see the bloom after tracking news alerts for years. "If you see a news article, and it's from two days ago, it's gone, so you gotta run quick," Breton said. He compared the scent to "a stinky diaper that's been left out in the sun," adding that despite the odor, the plant was "bright, beautiful and colorful. It's a lovely plant."
Others found the smell more familiar than shocking. Caroline Murray, a senior, noted, "I would say it smells kind of like a compost pile, a little bit like a working farm. I'm from Vermont, so I'm very used to the smell of the farm and manure."
For Namuuna Negi, a junior, the fleeting nature of the bloom added to the experience. "The impermanence of it, I think. People like to be in on what's happening," Negi said. "If they hear something's going to die soon, they want to go see it before that happens so they can talk about it later."
Educational Mission and Broader Impact
Clark emphasized that the bloom highlights the broader mission of the Talcott Greenhouse, which he called a "plant museum" housing about 2,000 plant species—a small fraction of the estimated 350,000 to 400,000 plant species worldwide.
"When anyone comes to the greenhouse, it's an opportunity to engage them with some facet of the plant world," Clark said. "When it's a plant that's so dramatic as the corpse flower, it's this special opportunity to impress upon them the diversity and some of the amazing adaptations that plants have to survive in their environment in unique ways."
By midday Tuesday, the odor had begun to dissipate as greenhouse vents were opened, offering visitors a less intense—though still memorable—experience. After the brief flowering period, the plant will gradually deteriorate and collapse. Because corpse flowers cannot pollinate themselves, seeds will only form if pollen from another titan arum is available.
