For weeks, tourists have been flocking to the U.S. Botanical Garden to take selfies with the giant plant, but Tuesday is the first time visitors will get a whiff of the corpse flower.
Advertisement
“I was at dinner last night and saw that it would be blooming today”, said visitor Aurelia Lyman, of MA.
The exotic Corpse Flower, so named for its unbearable stench- is temperamental, unpredictable, and a fan favorite at botanical gardens. It started emerging Thursday afternoon after more than 10 years of growth. Those eager for a similar plant at their house can grow a voodoo-lily, a corpse flower relative, which grows up to six-feet and also has an unpleasant smell.
Daniel Janzen, a professor of biology at the University of Pennsylvania, says the plants may be flowering together because they’re related.
The Corpse flower bloomed in Auckland’s Wintergarden a year ago, and now thousands in the United States have seen, and smelled, a corpse flower bloom.
The USBG Conservatory exhibit ends Wednesday at 11 p.m. when peak bloom for the corpse flower concludes.
It is expected to bloom for 24 to 48 hours before collapsing.
Over the past several decades, the U.S. Botanical Garden has displayed five other corpse flowers, each of which was met with enthusiastic crowds excited to breathe in the nasty odor.
Another proposed explanation is the recent popularity of the corpse flower. A garden volunteer told visitors the flower smelled like a garbage truck that she drove past earlier in the day.
Advertisement
“Stinky!” one girl shouted as she held her nose.
