I can barely find any coverage of this, and it just seems wrong to me, so pardon the crappy metro listing when I tell you that the corpse flower is about to bloom at the US Botanic Garden.
What is the corpse flower? It’s a huge blossom (think Little Shop of Horrors) that happens to smell like rotting flesh. Yep, a giant, stinky flower. It’s exceedingly rare and the species doesn’t bloom all that often, but the US Botanic Garden has one and you’ll be able to go smell it for yourself on Sunday and Monday.
It’s fairly common for conservatories to provide webcams so you can see the stinky bloom without actually having to smell it, but what fun is that? No word yet on whether the USBG plans to offer the cop-out option.
The flower, also known as the titan arum, smells like rotting flesh to attract carrion insects to the bloom so they can pollinate it. You can read more about the stinky flower here.
This post appeared in its original form at DC Metblogs
Tiffany Baxendell Bridge is an Internet enthusiast and an incurable smartass. When not heckling the neighborhood political scene on Twitter, she can be found goofing off with her ukulele, Bollywood dancing, or obsessing about cult TV. She is That Woman With the Baby In the Bar.
Tiffany lives in Brookland with her husband Tom, son Charlie, and two high-maintenance cats. Read why Tiffany loves DC.
