Quantcast
The smell of rotting flesh will overpower the New York Botanical Garden – Metro US

The smell of rotting flesh will overpower the New York Botanical Garden

The smell of rotting flesh will overpower the New York Botanical Garden
Provided

The New York Botanical Garden is about to host a flower it hasn’t seen in almost 80 years.

Amorphophallus titanum is better known as the “corpse flower” because its bloom gives off the smell of rotting flesh (this is apparently attractive to pollinators). The flower is expected to bloom any day now, according to the Botanical Garden. “It should be a colorful — if ‘fragrant’ — good time in the Conservatory,” they write in a Facebook post.

According to the NYBG, it’s taken 10 years of “careful tending and feeding” the plant, all for a bloom that lasts only about 24 to 36 hours.

RELATED: Free virtual reality film will take you from Brooklyn to the Orion Nebula

The corpse flower is housed in the Enid A. Haupt Conservatory at the Bronx garden. If you’d like to take a pass on smelling the bloom first-hand but still want to see the flower (and maybe take a little glee in visitors reacting to the stench), NYBG has considerately set up a live webcam.