Desmond HenryI'M HERE to report that the much revered and immortalised Jamaican stinking toe plant, has met its botanic challenge in the area of odour infestation. Out of the ground has come the Titan Arum, reeking with effervescence so foul it has forced garden watchers to arrive with their nostrils pinched with clothes pins. According to press reports, the arum is not only the world's largest flowers, it is also the smelliest.
It appeared dramatically on the scene at a botanic garden show in Washington, D.C., recently, and had both garden officials and visiting patrons in awe. The sheer size of its flower (a span of five feet) plus the odour of its emittance (smells like rotting flesh) had the garden putting warning signs saying, "Visit at your olfactory risk."
I myself did not get a chance to see the flowering arum in its smelly state, because of the fleetingness of its existence. The flower lasts for just 48 hours, and then goes right back into dormancy. Kind of like saying: "Since I smell that bad, let me go out of here as quickly as possible."
GIANT ARUM
The giant arum is grown in a pot and takes about (get this) eight to 10 years to reach full flowering from the time it was first planted. Its origin, it is believed, is from the Sumatran jungle in Indonesia. It can grow to heights of over eight feet, with its fleeting blooms projected from tall, reticulated stalks topped with compound leaves. Descriptions of its odour vary from "foul" and "vulgar" to "monstrous". Its fragrances, botanic experts say, is designed to attract carrion flies and dung beetles. Not to mention John Crows.
Personally, I'd like to see someone do a smellability contest against our own "stinking toe", and see which one would win the world's foulest odour contest. After all we have already won champion speller, so how about champion smeller. I'd like to sample for example, how close it comes to some of those wet football socks I had to contend with in the dormitories at Cornwall College.
On the other hand we might just open up a whole new series in our annual flower shows, with a specific area called the "Odour Corner" featuring the arum, stinking toe and any other. Eventually I can picture the arum being called around Jamaica, "deadman roses." Because of the long wait between planting and blooming however, the only person I could think of with the sense of delicacy and patience required, would be Vandah Alberga who runs such a good flower show in Mandeville each year. Incidentally just in case you're not aware, Vandah is authentic Treasure Beachean.
And so, back to my smell-bad theme. I'd like to warn the arum that before it gets too conceited and think about driving our authentic stinkers into an inferiority complex, I have news for it. The thought of being outwhiffed by a foreigner is not going to work in Jamaica. So I'm sending a poetic early warning shower, to this "facety" flower. It's called Message to Arum:
The incredulity
Of your smellability
Is so outpouring
It's overpowering
Your rank and file
Is oh, so vile
I pray and hope
You're not like dope
But back a yard
You're being warned hard
Dat since yuh tink
Yuh bad and stink
One more whiff
And you're a stiff.
Next time yuh smell
Might be in hell
So take your leave
No one will grieve
Go while you can
From stinkin-toe land
Needless to say, that's a challenge alright. And just in case the new smeller takes it up, I'm proposing that on the day of the smell-off contest, that Headman John Crow be the main judge. If anyone has any ideas as to any additional fragrances we might add to the contest, I'd like to be advised. We'll see.
THE BOTTOM LINE: Cats regard humans as warm-blooded furniture.
Desmond Henry is a marketing consultant formerly based in Treasure Beach, St. Elizabeth, now residing in north Florida.
