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It doesn't happen often, but when it does, it raises a stink!
The New York Botanical Garden's giant Corpse Flower (Amorphophallus titanum) has bloomed (a day earlier than the garden predicted) and you have only today to see it before it withers.
RECOMMENDED: New York Botanical Garden guide
Sitting inside the Haupt Conservatory's Aquatic House, the bud reaches over six feet tall and started opening at about 3pm on Thursday. Given that, the best time to see it in person is throughout the day today, Friday, November 5. Just be forewarned it smells like rotting meat.
NYBG is open 10am to 6pm today.
If you think you've see this massive plant bloom before, you'd be correct—it last bloomed in 2016 and 2019.
The Corpse Flower blooming is a big deal. Titan-arums take years to form flower buds and once it's ready to bloom, it does so over just 36 hours. It's hard to predict when these things will bloom—each plant takes seven years or more to store enough energy to bloom for the first time. This particular titan-arum is 12 years old.
Why does it stink? Apparently, the smell and its deep-red, meaty color of the open spathe (gross), attracts insect pollinators that feed on dead animals to help pollinate its flowers.
NYBG got its first titan-arum from Sumatra in 1932 but it didn't bloom until 1937. It was the first corpse flower to bloom in the Western Hemisphere, attracting "mobs" of visitors, reporters, and photographers, the garden says. Its 8-foot spadix was the largest ever grown in cultivation.
In 1939 when a second one bloomed at NYBG, the then Bronx Borough President designated the Amorphophallus titanum as the official flower of the Bronx. (It was replaced by the more conventionally attractive daylily in 2006, which we are disappointed about.)
If you can't make it out today to see it for yourself, head over to nybg.org or its social media pages to catch a timelapse of the flower's bloom and be glad you don't have to smell it.