What’s the stink at Selby Gardens?

The conservatory at Marie Selby Botanical Gardens will be filled with the stench of two corpse flowers or Amorphophallus titanum in the coming week. 

Two flowers named “Seymour” and “Audrey” are rapidly approaching the stage where they bloom, releasing a putrid scent. The scent omitted by the plants are said to resemble rotting fish and sweaty socks. 

The plants are already on display in the conservatory and will remain there through the completion of their bloom cycles. To have two corpse flowers blooming together is rare according to Director of Horticulture Mike McLaughlin. They tend to bloom every three to seven years. 

“Typically these plants flower erratically, but somehow Seymour and Audrey have become synchronized. This will be their second bloom together,” McLaughlin in a release.“We have an amazing opportunity to propagate the corpse flower and create fruits from these plants. Perhaps there is something of a love story between these two.”

Seymour and Audrey are named for the main characters in the musical and film adaptations of “Little Shop of Horrors.” As the plants grow, in some cases more than 5-feet-tall, they resemble the carnivorous man-eating plant from “Little Shop of Horrors.”