Corpse Flower Set to Bloom

On August 19th, thousands of eager guests swarmed the Denver Botanical Gardens to witness-with eyes and noses-the long-awaited bloom of the corpse flower, a plant native to Southeast Asia whose strong stench resembles that of rotting flesh.

The flower gets its name from its unique smell, which is often compared to the smell of rotting flesh, and smelly socks. The towering plant takes at least seven years to bloom and, when it does, everyone knows it.

The plant, titan arum, makes up for its lack of a sweet smell with a tremendously large bloom, about eight feet tall, Live Science said. He reportedly felt viewers might be offended by the plant’s Latin name which translates to mean “giant misshapen penis”.

A live video of the plant blooming, provided by KUSA Denver, was posted on YouTube with the tag, “Stinky DBG (Denver Botanic Garden) is officially opening up!”

Spike will begin releasing his stink about 12 hours before the deep red flower blooms. To accommodate the crowd, they’ll be open until Midnight today and tomorrow and there is a live feed to let people see the flower from the comfort of their couch. Deforestation in Southeast Asia has also made the corpse flower a threatened species.

Thursday morning, Denver Botanic Garden workers removed some of the corpse flower’s pollen so other botanic gardens around the country could use it to pollinate their own corpse flowers.