It's big, weird looking, and smells gross: Meet the 'corpse flower'

Some say it smells like a dead rat, others a decomposing cow. Everyone can agree that the blooming titan arum plant has an atrocious scent that you have to get a whiff of to fully comprehend.

"It's a fascinating flower, and it stinks," Paul Licht, director of the UC Berkeley Botanical Garden, told KQED. "But in a way that somehow appeals to people. People go to horror movies to be scared, right? Well they go to see this flower to be made nauseous." The five-foot-tall 'corpse flower,' whose scientific name Amorphophallus titanum means "giant misshapen penis," only blooms once every seven years. The botanical garden's plant — nicknamed Trudy — is expected to fully bloom by the end of the week, and Licht is excited. "It's a pretty fantastic thing to witness, even if you've seen it before," he said. "I'm still completely drawn to it. It's something you want to see over and over again."

The plant uses its terrible scent to draw in pollinators, but because it wants to attract carrion flies and beetles, it produces an odor reminiscent of rotting flesh. Native to Sumatran rainforests, the flower heats up to more than 100 degrees, and can grow fast — on Tuesday, Trudy gained two inches overnight. The smell is only produced for the last 24 hours of the bloom, and thousands of people are expected to flock to Trudy during that time period in order to experience her stench in all its glory.

The Week

Escape your echo chamber. Get the facts behind the news, plus analysis from multiple perspectives.

SUBSCRIBE & SAVE

Sign up for The Week's Free Newsletters

From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.

From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.

Sign up