"Logic is a wreath of beautiful flowers that smell bad."
— Spock, Star Trek: The Original Series
People tend to associate flowers with good smells — the majority of them smell good, and some of the most common flowers (such as the rose and the lavender) are the good-smelling ones. So when a flower smells bad, it can be a hilarious subversion of expectations.
The humor in the Stinky Flower is twofold — first of all, as mentioned before, it's a subversion of expectations. Secondly, bad smells are often used for comedy in themselves, since gross situations have been played for comedy since the dawn of time.
Quite often, someone will sniff the flower, expecting it to smell good, only to get a shock to find it stinks. Sometimes, the flower belongs to somebody, whose family, spouse, or neighbors will complain about the smell. If someone actually likes the smell of the flower, it's a good bet they're The Pig-Pen.
The flower might have a Visible Odor or a Wilting Odor, end up as an Ill-Fated Flowerbed, be exploited by a villain through Evil Smells Bad, or be Fantastic Flora. If the smell of the flower is mistaken for something worse, it can overlap with Grossout Fakeout or subvert Smells of Death. Compare Foul Flower.
Examples:
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Fan Works
- The King Nobody Wanted: Used metaphorically through Garth "the Gross" Tyrell's motif, combining his house's rose sigil with his notorious flatulence. His chapter epithet is "The Foul-Smelling Flower".
Literature
- Disney Fairies: In one of the chapter books, "Lily's Pesky Plant", the eponymous plant surprises everyone by smelling awful and makes Lily's case for continuing to care for it much harder.
- The Hollows: In Million Dollar Demon, Rachel uses a spell to send the smell of lilies in her garden to Piscary's, which Constance kicked her out of to occupy, as a prank. It smells so bad that the vampires have to hole up in the basement.
- The Immortals: Swamp Lilies are an absolutely vile-smelling flower. Apparently the scent is to attract flies for pollination (an example of Shown Their Work as the Real Life folder attests). Numair keeps a vial of the petals on his person for use as smelling salts. Daine describes the smell as enough to wake the dead and the threat of having them waved under her nose is enough to will herself closer to consciousness.
- The Lord of the Rings: The flowers that grow in the valley of Minas Morgul are described as, "beautiful and yet horrible of shape, like the demented forms in an uneasy dream; and they gave forth a faint sickening charnel-smell; an odour of rottenness filled the air."
- Raptor Red: One chapter details Red's first encounter with flowers. As insects like bees and butterflies have yet to evolve, the flowers give off the smell of rotten meat to attract flies and carrion beetles to carry pollen for them. It drives Red and the other carnivores in the area nuts, as they smell a giant feast of carrion that they can't find.
Live-Action TV
- Giggles: In one sketch, there are three anthropomorphic flowers. One of them farts, making him smell bad.
- Scorpion: Walter's idea of a fun date? Go to see the opening of an Amorphophallus Titanum a.k.a. Corpse Flower, which smells... well. The fact that his girlfriend goes along with this is a clue to the gang that the relationship isn't healthy: she's still feeling the effects of him saving her life a few episodes earlier, and he... is Walter.
- Discussed in the Star Trek: The Original Series episode "I, Mudd". When Kirk and his crew are spouting Non Sequiturs to get some robots to shut down, Spock says that "Logic is a wreath of beautiful flowers that smell bad".
Puppet Shows
- Sesame Street: Whenever Stinky, the talking plant, grows a flower (usually on his birthday), it will often smell bad. This is a shock for Maria when she tries to sniff the flower.
Video Games
- Animal Crossing: If the player abstains from controlling a weed infestation, a stinky flower called rafflesia may sprout in the village. The villagers sometimes comment on the plant's foul smell, which is further highlighted by the flies that start spawning near it.
- Epic Battle Fantasy 4 has a giant Man-Eating Plant named Rafflesia as the boss of Lankyroot Jungle. Much like the real-life flower, it also stinks to high heaven (in fact, one of its attacks has it belch to either stagger or poison the party). Earlier, the party also complain about how smelly some of the plants in the jungle are, with only Anna not minding the smell.
Natalie: (when Rafflesia does its burp attack) "I can't take this smell anymore, I think I'll just hold my breath for the rest of the battle!"
Natalie: (after defeating Rafflesia) "Take that, you nasty plant thing! Maybe we can finally get some fresh air!" - King's Quest VI has an item called the Flower of Stench. This blossom is described as smelling like rotten eggs. You must use it to trick a gnome with a superhuman sense of smell, the flower covers up your scent.
- Pokémon Red and Blue: Gloom is a Poison-type Pokémon that resembles a flower bud. Both its pistil and the honey that it drools are said to smell terrible, and it appropriately gets Stench as an Ability. It evolves into Vileplume, who is based on the rafflesia.
- In the 8-bit game Spellbound, the Power-Pong Plant is one of the two smelly objects you need to cast a spell protecting you from poison gas.
- Starbound has an unobtainable item found on jungle planets called the Putrid Flower
, which clearly resembles the rafflesia. Judging by the Player Character's quotes upon examining it, it clearly doesn't smell too good...
Human Protector: "This flower smells awful!"
Hylotl Protector: "An altogether awful flower. It smells putrid."
Novakid Protector: "Whoa! That is one smelly flower."
Web Comics
- Blonde Sunrise: The wolfsbane flower is noted to smell particularly nasty to lycans.
Western Animation
- The Bots Master: One episode has Ninjzz acquire a "love flower", which looks nice but smells horrible, and can be used to make a equally smelly perfume that causes people it's applied to to turn into lovesick fools.
- Camp Lazlo: The episode "Camp Kidney Stinks" features the blooming of foot-shaped flowers literally called stinkweed.
- The Clangers: In "The Strange-Smelling Flower", Mother Clanger has planted a flower in her garden. Tiny and Small wonder where that stench is coming from, and they find out the new flower is the source of it. The sky moos, however, love the smell.
- The Dragon Prince: One of the plant species in Xadia goes by many names: Flatu-lily, peri-stinkle, toot-lip... At the end of the day, it's a fart flower. Much to Callum's chagrin, Azymondias likes the smell.
- Futurama: Zigzagged. Zoidberg meets a flower girl who can't smell, and the two fall in love. Eventually, Zoidberg uses his doctor expertise to grant her the ability to smell, all while accepting that she will hate him for how bad he smells. To his surprise, she instead develops a hate for flowers and believes he smells just fine.
- Mega Man: Fully Charged: "Flower Power" revolves around an incredibly foul-smelling plant called the "Corpse Flower". Although this is ultimately inverted at the end when Wood Man plants it in a certain spot in the forest, causing it to bloom and create a pleasant scent.
- PAW Patrol: In "Pups Save a Stinky Flower", Mayor Humdinger gives Mayor Goodway a flower that opens and releases an odor that can be smelled all around Adventure Bay, and Mayor Goodway even initially wonders if Chickaletta farted when she first gets a whiff of it. Even a skunk is shown to hate the smell. As such, the PAW Patrol has to get to the flower before the wind catches its seeds and more foul-smelling flowers grow.
- The Simpsons:
- In "Moe Baby Blues", the Springfield residents come to see the blooming of the Sumatran Century Flower. Its stench is so noxious that it immediately kills nearby flowers and everyone runs back into their cars for cover, causing a massive traffic jam in the process.
- The theoretical "stenchblossom" and "crapweed" from "The Principal and the Pauper" also qualify.
- 3rd & Bird: In one episode, Muffin finds a strange flower that, while beautiful, smells bad. It makes fart noises as well.
Real Life
- This trope is actually quite common in real life.
- Plants from the Rafflesiaceae family have massive five-petaled flowers whose scent is often compared to that of rotting flesh. This evolutionary adaptation is designed to attract flies, which transport the pollen to fecundate other plants.
- The corpse flower (titan arum) is a huge plant that does indeed stink of rotting meat when it opens fully. Fortunately for humans living nearby, it blooms only every four or six years; the blooming period lasts only 24 to 48 hours.
- The flowers of the Bradford pear (Pyrus calleryana) contain chemicals called amines that the nose interprets as smelling like body odor or rotting fish.
- Tomato flowers have a notable scent to them that isn't very pleasant, but some people actually do like the more "grassy" or "sour" scent. Some actually describe it as "mint-like," similar to...
- Marigolds, despite their appearance and symbolism, actually smell rather pungent. Not as bad as other examples of this trope, but you still don't want to put your nose in a marigold and take a whiff. This is actually one reason why the dead are supposedly attracted to marigolds. It's worth pointing out the scent is actually in the leaves — but the flowers do pick up the smell, similar to tomato flowers.
- Shasta daisies are known as smelling like cat urine.
- Plants from the Rafflesiaceae
