‘Corpse Flower’ blooms at Botanical Gardens

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For the first time in 80 years, an amorphophallus titanum is about to bloom at the New York Botanical Gardens.

The plant, also known as the corpse flower because of its powerful odor, takes 10 years to bloom, and smells like rotting flesh once it does.

The Botanical Gardens’ plant was expected to fully bloom late Monday night. Onlookers gathered in the Enid A. Haupt Conservatory – where a mature plant is on display along with two younger versions – on Monday afternoon, hoping to catch a glimpse of what an employee called a “once-in-a-lifetime experience.”

“It’s one of the biggest flowers in the world, so it’s definitely a big deal,” said Genesis Tavares, an employee at the Botanical Gardens. “Once it opens up it only lives for 24 to 36 hours, so it’s 10 years of work and then, you know, you really just get like a day or two out of it.”

Even when the plant grows for 10 years, there is no certainty it will eventually bloom, Ms. Tavares said.

“We hope they can mature into the adult plant that we see here, but that’s not always the case,” she said. “We kind of just keep hoping that we get lucky.”

The most interesting part of the corpse flower for Ms. Tavares is how unpredictable the plant can be.

“It can grow into whatever it wants every year,” she said. Ms. Tavares tacked on several other pieces bits of knowledge she found interesting about the plant, including the fact that the poisonous plant can be humans’ dinner in its native Indonesia.

“In some places, they actually take the roots right here, and they boil six or seven times to get all the poison out, and then they eat them,” she said. “So it’s a very different type of species. It’s not something you just see lined up or cultivated easily, it takes a lot hard work and time.”

A live video stream of the corpse flower from the NYBG can be viewed here

Corpse flower, New York Botanical Gardens, Anthony Capote

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