Stinky pretty things

It's almost christmas. Now we are supposed to spend time with family, binge in on vulgar food and sing crappy music. And everything should be decorated with pretty, nice-smelling things such as pine, apples, cinnamon, oranges and so forth. (If we are those who believe that we are descendents of the apple-eating Adam and snake-loving Eve we may read a chapter or two in a book written by old men from an extinct culture, highly divergent from our own. Well, well. I'm not going to minimize theist in this post (although I might have done it already)). I'm going to write about what you would not like to have in your house in order to create a nice and relaxing atmophere, unless you're related to the residents of the Hardesty house (Texas chainsaw massacre), namely so called "carrion flowers". 

Carrion flowers are also known as stinking flowers, since they smell of rotten flesh. At a first sight, they often look pretty but their smell is awful, having evolved to attract beetles and flies for pollination purposes, and not humans for decoration purposes.

Rafflesia arnoldii.

The species with the largest individual flower (in the whole world actually) is Rafflesia arnoldii, being capable of growing into an impressive one metrer in diameter and weighing up to 11 kilograms. It can be found (although it's hard to find it unless it's floweing; then you can follow the scent) in the rainforests of southeast Asia, and since these forest are dissapearing day by day it is assumed that this facinating plant is greatly threatened. 

Then we have Titan arum, a carrion flower bragging as being the plant with the worlds largest unbranched inflorescence in the world being able to grow to a enormous 3 meters (!). This plant is also found in southeast Asia. 

Titan arum.

Titan arum.

Two other carrion flower species are Stapelia gigantea and Smilax herbacea, stinking up nature and being loved by carcass attracted insects around the world.

Stapelia gigantea. Image taken from http://anti-matter-3d-com/Stapeliads

Similax herbacea. Image taken from http://mrhyker.tripod.com/floraandfauna.