Crowd gets whiff of Brooklyn Botanic Garden's corpse flower

The Brooklyn Botanic Garden's Amorphophallus gigas, a close relative of the famed corpse flower and apparently plenty stinksome in its own right, has bloomed for the first time since it was established there in 2018. The carrion scent attracts pollinators.

It has hundreds of flowers, both male and female, inside the bloom, and it can take years between blooming events, said gardener Chris Sprindis, who first noticed the inflorescence, or cluster of flowers, around New Year's Eve. The bloom will last only a few days before it collapses.

"So this is the first time it's happened here," Sprindis said. "It's not going to happen next year. It's going to be several years before it happens again."

In 2001, our own Rusty Blazenhoff visited a corpse flower and reported on the unique experience — "The Alameda corpse flower is trending and I actually got to see it on the day it bloomed!" — and has reported on the one in San Francisco too. Popkin posted video of another example; rare as they are, they can't so much as twitch without international attention. Here's a GIF of one blossoming.

The plant's latin name, Amorphophallus titanum comes from Ancient Greek amorphos, "without form, misshapen" + phallos, "phallus", and titan, "giant."