Corpse Flower Blooms Unexpectedly at Chicago Botanic Garden

The Chicago Botanic Garden will stay open until 2 a.m. for “peak freshness viewing” a website explained.

Alice is a titan arum which is a rare plant native to the rain forests of Sumatra, Indonesia.

Here’s a little more on the science behind the corpse flower’s smell…

The Chicago Botanic Garden announced Tuesday that a second corpse flower is not only on display in its semi-tropical greenhouse, but it is blooming.

The corpse flowers, whose botanical name is Amorphophallus titanum, stink like rotten flesh when blooming.

Titan arum flowers are known for taking up to 12 years to bloom and for their repulsive smell.

Hurry, if you want to see her and smell her as Alice is estimated to only bloom for about 24 to 48 hours and the foul odor is expected to be at its strongest right after she blooms. Wondering why it smells so stinky? The Chicago Botanic Garden credits “a combination of dimethyl trisulfide, isovaleric acid, dimethyl disulfide, benzyl alcohol, indole, and trimethylamine”. The Chicago Botanic Garden is located at 1000 Lake Cook Rd, in Glencoe, 1/2 mile east of the Edens Expressway.

“It smelled worse this morning when the female flowers were receptive to pollinators”, Wheatley said.

After the initial bloom it will take at least another two years for the flowers to bloom again. “The flower is opening up as we speak, so it still has a little more time”.

Once these insects crawl into the flower’s spadix or interior axis, they are coated with pollen through which they cross-pollinate other corpse flowers when they fly or crawl away.

Alice, as the nearly-five feet tall plant is called, unexpectedly bloomed Monday night, shocking Chicago botanists who recently mourned the loss of “Spike”, a different corpse flower that didn’t bloom last month. “It brings resolution to the 75,000 people who came to see Spike”.