July 28 2016, 20:43

Here at the Washington Botanical Garden, the enormous “corpse flower”, the corpse flower (Amorphophallus titanum), is about to bloom in a few days. It is the smelliest flower in the world, and, coincidentally, the largest. The blooming of the titan arum lasts only two days. The scent of the flower resembles a mix of rotten eggs and spoiled fish, and visually, the flower looks like a piece of decaying meat. The leaf is up to 3 meters long, up to 1 meter in diameter. This particular specimen has not bloomed in the last six years. It fully blooms in a couple of hours, stays bloomed for 24-48 hours – meanwhile, the flower even noticeably heats up (up to 40 degrees Celsius), then it rapidly collapses. Imagine, a typical flower waits seven years to collect insects-pollinators for a few days, three or four times in its lifetime. It has a hard time with self-pollination – male and female flowers are in the same inflorescence, and first the female flowers open, then a day or two later the male ones appear.

Here is a live broadcast from this botanical garden – the camera is focused on the flower, everyone is waiting: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k8hiVv8SRFQ