Judge John Hodgman on Putrid Flowers

Jilian writes: I have a voodoo lily bulb that I wish to grow in our home. It’s basically a miniature corpse flower: Every three to four years, it will bloom and smell like rotting meat for two days. It’s a wonder of nature, but my husband objects. I say being his life partner has obliged me to put up with a variety of bad smells, so he owes me.

I’ve never been able to make it to the New York Botanical Garden to catch their giant corpse flower — the titan arum — in full, rancid bloom, so I’m glad to know about this junior version: the amorpohphallus konjac, a.k.a. “devil’s tongue,” a.k.a. “elephant yam,” but never known as “Lil Corpsey” (until now). And until you wrote, I never knew that, apart from the stench, it also produces edible tubers that can be transformed into noodles, jelly candy and facial sponges. A true multihyphenate! If I had a human houseguest this interesting, I’d like to think I’d tolerate their occasional B.O. But if your husband can’t take it, he can get a hotel room for the weekend. Let Lil Corpsey cook!