Stinky Flowers

What seems like a hundred years ago, around 1972,  I purchased a 4 inch long, stick at a dimestore and it was labeled "Ti Tree".  I think it cost me a whole $1.50.  I planted that stick and now, eons later, that Ti Tree is about 5 and 1/2 feet tall.  About 10 years ago it started blooming around Christmas time.  It missed Christmas this year and now it is in bloom.  These are the beautiful blooms, which drop sticky droplets of a sap, all over the plant and my hardwood floors.  OH, what a small price to pay for such a cool plant.  The downside here is that these blooms only open at night (you are looking at them closed in this photo) and they give off the most extreme sweet fragrance.  So pungent and fragrant is the odor, that for the last four years we have cut off the bloom branch and tossed it outside.  Imagine mixing Evening In Paris, Hawaiian White Ginger, Channel# 5 and maybe a bit of 5 more perfumes all together.....yeah thats how this thing smells.  It has only had one stalk of blooms and only once a year, but oh how horrible the odor gets when you sit and enhale it all through the evening as you eat or watch some TV.  I will try for some photos tonight when the white flowers fully open.