Corpse flowers on display at the U.S. Botanic Garden in 2017.
Adrian Higgins/The Washington Post A huge plant known as the corpse flower in recognition of its foul smell bloomed at the U.S. Botanic Garden on Sunday night, and another similar specimen may bloom imminently, the garden said.
Years pass between the relatively brief blooms of these exotic plants, according to the Botanic Garden. Their attraction appears to be the product of the beauty and brevity of their bloom as well as the disagreeable nature of the odor. They are among the lesser known of Washington’s natural attractions, and the two can be seen in the garden’s glass-roofed conservatory near Independence Avenue at the foot of Capitol Hill.
At a height of 82.5 inches, the first of the two plants “began opening and smelling late” Sunday night, the botanical garden said on social media. It last bloomed in 2016.
The second and slightly taller of the two specimens of Amorphophallus titanum “is also about ready to bloom,” the garden said. It was about six years old and had never bloomed before. With luck, the garden said, the second plant might open Monday evening, in what seemed a fortuitous coincidence.
However, it could not be immediately learned if the bloom had begun. The period of blooming for the species seemed almost as brief as the interval between blooms is long. A bloom usually remains from one to three days, the garden said.
The smell, a pungent foulness that paradoxically appears to be part .