Thousands lining up to see the foul-smelling ‘corpse flower’

Over a thousand people queued up outside an abandoned gas station in San Francisco’s Bay Area this week to catch a glimpse of the extremely rare and aptly named ‘corpse flower’, known for its putrid smell, which is often compared to that of rotting flesh.

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A similar scene played out in a greenhouse at Philadelphia’s Temple University around the same time, where two of the endangered flowering plants are blooming for the first time since they were brought to campus.

The ‘corpse flower’ is a flowering plant, which is native to the rainforests of Sumatra in Indonesia. The scientific name of the rare plant, Amorphophallus titanum, quite literally translates to giant, misshapen phallus, presumably due to its appearance.

In about a decade, the ‘corpse flower’ can grow to be up to 10 feet tall and unveil two of its key components — a deep red skirt-like petal known as the spathe and a yellow rod-like ‘spadix’.

Another crucial component of the plant is the ‘corm’, a fleshy underground plant stem which acts as a storage organ where the corpse plant’s energy is stored. The unique plant is said to have the biggest corm in existence, sometimes weighing around 100 kgs.

The corpse flower is known to be one of the world’s largest ‘unbranched inflorescence’ or a stalk bearing a cluster of flowers. The average corpse flower has a lifespan of about three-four decades.