People Actually Showed Up To Get A Whiff Of A Flower That Smells Like Rotting Flesh

How empty would your schedule need to be for you to go check out a flower with such a rancid odor that it's known as the "corpse flower."

Well, apparently plenty of folks have the time to give it a whiff because a bunch of people flocked to the California Academy of Sciences in San Francisco.

According to Sky News, the corpse flower gets its name from the horrific odor it emits which people say smells like garlic, sweaty socks, or rotting flesh depending on whose sniffer you trust.

However, what makes this pungent plant unique is that it blooms one to three days every seven to ten years, and that's why for some very strange, very bored people it's an event.

California Academy of Sciences has a corpse flower, and they even gave it a name, Mirage. Why they went with a stripper name for something that smells like Jame Gumb's basement I have no idea. They didn't ask me.

But Mirage bloomed this week, which drew the hardest of the hardcore botany fans who hoped to soak in a little bit of the stink, which serves a purpose aside from attracting dopey tourists.

"It's kind of imitating the smell of kind of a dead carcass to kind of get all the flies to come and interact with it, pick up pollen, and then take that pollen to another flower that it might investigate due to its smell," CAS horticulturist Lauren Greig explained.

That's all well and good, but does it realize pollinating insects still visit good-smelling flowers? Sure doesn't seem to be a problem for them.

People watch a blooming "corpse flower," at the California Academy of Sciences in San Francisco. Was there nothing on TV that day? (Photo by Li Jianguo/Xinhua via Getty Images)

Is There A Bigger Waste Of Time Than Checking Out The Corpse Flower?

I don't know about you, but there's not one circumstance where someone would ask me "Hey, do you want to go smell a flower" in which I would say yes. It would be an immediate no. 

They could tell me it's the best-smelling flower in the world. One that smells like cookies, and I'd be like, "Sorry, can't; I'm busy." I wouldn't even dignify it with full sentences.

So if someone asked me if I wanted to go see a flower that smells like rotting flesh, I would not only say no before they even got through the word "flesh," I'd question why I was associating with them in the first place.

It's not for me, but other people still wanted in… for some reason. Not only did they want in, but some — like San Francisco-based data scientist Bri Lister moved meetings around for this (imagine explaining that to your boss) — waited in line for an hour for the privilege of inhaling one of the worst-smelling plants known to man. 

"In certain directions, I definitely picked up on the sweaty socks, sweaty gym clothes, but probably luckily not full-on rotting meat, but definitely a smellier plant than average," Lister said, breaking the corpse flower's odor down like a sommelier.

I still don't get it. All I can think of is you go check it out to say you did. 

Good luck trying to impress a date with that one.

"So — funny story — the other day, I was in line for a whiff of the corpse flower…"

That will guarantee you hear tires screeching out of the parking lot a couple of minutes after your date excuses herself to the bathroom.