A ‘Corpse Flower’ finally blooms at Chicago Botanic Garden

According to Fox News, the Chicago Botanic Garden is home to the rare phenomenon of a corpse flower, a unique plant that is causing a major stink in the Windy City. Spike, another one of the botanic garden’s corpse flowers, failed to bloom in August, disappointing anxious visitors hoping to take in its stench.

The Chicago Botanic Garden is located at 1000 Lake Cook Road, Glencoe, IL.

A giant plant that smells like rotting meat and has a Latin name that loosely translates to “huge deformed penis” is just the sort of botanical character you’d expect to land a starring role in its own live web feed.

Pollak said, “Everything is looking nice and healthy. Right now, it looks like wine glass or chalice, but as we approach this afternoon, it will be more open”.

On Tuesday, Sept.29, the Chicago Botanic Garden announced that its corpse flower named Alice is blooming prompting thousands of spectators to line up to get the chance to see and even take selfies with it. Titan arums – originally from the Indonesian rainforest – are a unusual plant; after taking around 10 years to bloom, the flower dies. Horticulturists had to manually open Spike because it was not able to bloom by itself. The smell is aimed at attracting pollinators that help it reproduce.

That smell which The Chicago Botanic Garden says is “a combination of dimethyl trisulfide, isovaleric acid, dimethyl disulfide, benzyl alcohol, indole, and trimethylamine” is essential to the plant natural pollination because it lures carrion beetles and flesh flies from up to an acre away that are attracted to the smell of decomposition. The corpse flower surprisingly began blooming late Monday. A Spike webcam drew 350,000 views and prepared the public and garden staff for Alice.

“It smells like a nasty diaper”, said Judy Levy of Highland Park. “This is the next best thing to flying halfway around the world to see it in its natural habitat”. On Tuesday, all of them returned to see Alice.