Nasty. Vile. Stinky. No insults here, just the awful truth about
a happy event: the blooming of the rare corpse flower in the
E.W. Heier Teaching and Research Greenhouse. When titan arum
opened into full bloom in September, it was stunning not only in
color and size (the flower is over 5 feet tall) but in smell.
The odor has been compared to rotting flesh, but that didn’t
prevent people from waiting in line to see the unusual tropical
specimen and test their ability to withstand its scent. The
bloom lasted just a few hours before it began to fade. The tuber
was grown in Hawaii from a seed that came from Indonesia. Its
donation to Binghamton in 2007 was arranged by alumnus Werner
Stiegler ’09, who called it “Metis,” in honor of the Greek Titan
goddess of learning and teaching. When Metis was sent to
Binghamton University in 2007, it weighed just over 4 pounds and
measured 8 inches in diameter. In spring 2008 it produced a
fair-sized leaf. But it really seemed to like its surroundings
because by the time Metis