How do we know?
↻ One of the pages with a moving picture
A giant flower warms itself up so its stink travels farther.
- A flower’s scent is a signal. It helps pollinators, like bees, find the right flower.
- The scent gets stronger near the flower, so the visitor can follow it there.
- Visitors carry pollen from flower to flower. Only then can the plant make seeds.
- Flowers for bees and butterflies smell strongest by day. Flowers for moths and bats smell strongest at night.
The corpse flower even warms itself up. The heat helps its stink travel farther, so flies and beetles come from far away.
Some strong-smelling flowers can be smelled by pollinators more than 1 kilometer away. That is over half a mile!
Not all scents are sweet. The giant corpse flower from Sumatra smells like rotting meat. That stink calls flies and beetles.
Wow number
1 km Some strong-smelling flowers can be smelled by pollinators more than 1 kilometer away. That’s over half a mile!
Myth or fact?
All flowers smell nice to people. Myth. Some, like the corpse flower, smell terrible to us, on purpose!
Some flowers smell strongest at night. Fact. They are pollinated by moths and bats, which are busy after dark.
Think about it
Why do you think bright flowers sometimes have little smell?
Where in the world?
Sumatra, Indonesia where the giant corpse flower smells like rotting meat. That stink calls flies and beetles — 0.5897° S, 101.3431° E.
Where these facts come from
Every number on page 65, and who measured it
This page tells us how flower smells help pollinators, and which flowers smell strongest at night.
Scent — The U.S. Forest Service
fs.usda.gov/wildflowers/pollinators/Plant_Strategies/scent.shtml
We checked it on 31 October 2026
This page tells us how pollinators carry pollen so plants can make seeds.
What is Pollination? — The U.S. Forest Service
fs.usda.gov/wildflowers/pollinators/What_is_Pollination/index.shtml
We checked it on 31 October 2026
This page tells us about the stinky corpse flower from Sumatra.
Corpse Flowers — The U.S. Botanic Garden in Washington, D.C.
usbg.gov/gardens-plants/corpse-flowers
We checked it on 31 October 2026
Has this changed?
Why flowers smell is not going to change.
The distances are for some strong-smelling flowers, and other flowers carry their scent less far.
Words from this page
- pollinator
- An animal, like a bee, that carries pollen from flower to flower.
- pollen
- The fine powder from flowers that a plant needs to make seeds.
Try it!
Sniff flowers in the morning and the evening.
1. With a grown-up, pick 3 garden flowers to visit. Never sniff a flower with a bee on it! 2. Sniff each one gently in the morning. Score its smell from 0 to 3. 3. Sniff the same flowers in the evening and score them again. Don’t pick or eat them.
What happens: some flowers may smell stronger at one time of day, when their pollinators are busy.
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