It’s sweaty stinky time again at the Huntington Library, Art Gallery, and Botanic Gardens. One of its rare corpse flowers is about to bloom, in all its putrescence. In the next 10 to 12 days, expect visitors to be lined up to enter the Huntington’s sauna-like viewing area in San Marino to give this giant, fantastically weird tropical plant a sniff.
Corpse flowers ( Amorphophallus titanum ) are native to the rain forests of Sumatra in Indonesia, so they like it hot and steamy. They also bloom once every four to six years in the wild for only 24 hours before they start closing again, so viewing windows are short and rare. If you miss seeing this one in person, you’re in luck.
The Huntington has 43 corpse flowers in its collection, which spend most of their time in a greenhouse removed from public view. Over time, the staff has developed ways to coax the plants into blooming every two to three years, said Brandon Tam, associate curator of the Huntington’s orchid (and corpse flower) collection. With so many plants, there are usually a few primed to bloom every year.
In 2023, for instance, the Huntington had four plants bloom between July and October, Tam said. And one of last year’s bloomers, named Stankosaurus Rex for its massive 8-foot height, is now fruiting, so it looks like a tall upright club covered with plump crimson orbs. The Huntington has had many corpse flowers fruit since its first display in 1999, and it’s used the seeds from those fruits to grow new pla.