Visitors of the Capitol's U.S. Botanic Garden awaiting the "corpse flower's" bloom may finally be rewarded for their patience.
According to the Associated Press, the flower, named for its deathly smell, began blooming on Sunday after scientists had been anticipating the event for more than a week. The garden's visiting hours have been extended into the night to allow for visitors to witness the event.
The garden's officials expect the "peak smell" to occur early Monday and remain open for 24 to 48 hours before it collapses on itself. The last corpse flower to bloom at the U.S. Botanic Garden was in 2007.
The plant's smell is meant to attract beetles and other bugs that normally drawn to the scent of rotting flesh.
"Just in the same way that a lovely smelling plant, like a rose, is attracting a bee or another kind of insect with what we would consider a very nice smell, to pollinate it, this particular plant has the strategy of using a horrible, fetid smell to attract insects," said Ari Novy, the public programs manager at the garden. "So this plant is essentially tricking those kinds of insects into coming, having a party inside of the plant and the flower and pollinating it and then moving on."
The flower, scientifically named titan arum, has been growing in the garden for ten years. It now stands several feet tall and started as a lima-bean-sized seed planted in the ground. While a hot and humid climate is ideal for the flower to bloom, Novy said the plant does so on an unpredictable schedule.
"Over the last many years, this plant has proven to be the biggest attractor, not only of carrion beetles but of human beings that we've had," Novy said. "It's just got everything for a good mystery. It's cryptic. It's exotic. The timing is off. It's inconsistent. It's inconsiderate. It's got all those great things. It's from far away, and it smells bad, and people get interested."
