My friend Mary-Jane, not known for her housekeeping, had worked for hours preparing her apartment for my first visit: every surface was clean and shiny. Not a dust bunny anywhere. There was even a bouquet of fresh-cut flowers on the dining room table!
I was impressed.
Until, that is, I sniffed something rotten in the air. Was that eggs gone bad? Lunch meat months past its expiry date? Guess ’ol MJ didn’t have time to clean out the fridge, I thought as I tried not to breathe through my mouth. Too late — that stinky, cloying smell was now in my throat, threatening to gag me.
I was too polite to ask my friend what the heck was stinking — after all, MJ didn’t seem to notice anything wrong. Maybe my nose was smelling things that more normal humans just couldn’t sniff out, I thought.
It was only on my birthday a month later that I was able to trace the stench at my friend’s house to the eye-poppingly beautiful stargazer lily, the flower that was the star of the bouquet she had placed on her table that day and the main attraction in the ridiculously large display that had just been delivered to my own home.
The smell was so putridly cloying there was no doubt that the lily was the culprit. I thought I was going to be sick to my stomach. To my nose, my beautiful lilies stank like what I expect a rotting corpse would smell were it to be displayed under bright lights in a sauna.
But why did only half the visitors to my home that week smell what I did? Those who didn’t think my stargazer lilies were stinky weren’t being polite — I’d specifically asked them to take a good sniff and let me know what they thought.
After Googling around the Internet, I discovered that to some people, the stargazer lily smells wonderful! Like taste buds, all olfactory senses are not created equal. This explains why a person’s perfume can both attract and repel.
I guess my nose likes my flowers out in the great outdoors, not stuck in a vase in a closed room.
While the stargazer lily is no amorphophallus titanum, the world’s biggest and worst-smelling flower (thank goodness the “corpse” flower is rare and blooms only a few times in its 40-year lifespan!), it does serve as a cautionary tale for homeowners planning to welcome buyers with a fresh bouquet of flowers.
For a good story on a bride’s disastrous experience with stargazer lilies, read Heaher T’s tale titled “How to develop pure hatred for stagazer lilies” on her blog, Comparative Childhood. Then give yourself a chance to smell sweet success by crossing the stinking lily off your list for all weddings and Open Houses.
