(Photo by Victoria Pickering)

(Photo by Victoria Pickering)

One open, two to go.

The first of three corpse flowers at the U.S. Botanic Garden bloomed overnight on Saturday. The bloom is still open, though the spadix is drooping at the top and likely to collapse soon.

The amorphophallus titanum, also popularly known as a titan arum, is native to Sumatra, Indonesia. The plants can grow up to 12 feet tall and live for 40 years in their natural habitat.

There are more than a dozen in the collection at the U.S. Botanic Garden, but they don’t bloom on a regular schedule. When one unfurled last year, it drew a record-breaking crowd after a three year spell without a stink.

The corpse flower nickname is a bit of a misnomer. What appears to be a giant flower is actually called an inflorescence, which features a collection of tiny flowers. After spending years storing enough energy to put on its otherworldly show, the plant opens at night and emits an unholy stench in order to attract pollinators. The bloom lasts another day or two, but the smell typically wears off by the next afternoon.

“By 10 p.m., it is really stinky and it just keeps getting stinkier until about midnight or so, before tapering off,” Susan Pell, the science and public programs manager at the Botanic Garden, told DCist last year. The next day and night, there’s still some lingering offensiveness but not exactly rotting elephant levels of unpleasantness. “If [visitors] want to get that super stink, they’ll want to come that night that its fully open,” she advised.

Visitors who got a chance to see the rare daytime bloom last year described the stench as akin to “rotting fish,” “an ode to trash truck, maybe garbage juices,” and “boiled cabbage meets gym socks.”

The Botanic Garden will stay open until 10 p.m. on the nights that the each of the corpse flowers are in bloom. The second and third flowers are expected to open between Aug. 22-30.

Previously:
The Corpse Flower’s Stench Is Returning To D.C., And There Are Three Blooming This Time
See And Sniff: What Does The Corpse Flower Really Smell Like?
The Rotting Stench Of A Corpse Flower Will Soon Grace D.C.
Learn About the Chemistry Behind the Corpse Flower
Video: Botanic Garden Visitors React to Corpse Flower
Time-Lapse Video: Watch the Botanic Garden’s Corpse Flower Bloom

Filed Under: corpse flower, titan arum, us botanic garden, usbg,