Take a whiff of Hamilton's 'corpse flower' in bloom
McMaster greenhouse open 9 a.m. to 11 p.m. Monday through Wednesday
Would the corpse flower by any other name smell as stinky? Now's your chance to find out.
The Titan arum flower at McMaster's greenhouse is in bloom, and the greenhouse is open extended hours for anyone who wants to go take a big whiff. Greenhouse hours Monday through Wednesday are 9 a.m. to 11 p.m., and the greenhouse accepts donations at the door.
And as it turns out, it's a boy! Or, at least, its name will be Magnus.
It reached 6 feet tall on Friday and began to unfurl its bloom — and its smell — over the weekend.
- Follow that rotting corpse smell to the McMaster greenhouse
- Live gardening chat Monday June 1 at 12:30 p.m
The flower is native to Western Sumatra, Indonesia, and can go five or 10 years between blooms, so the impending bloom is a smell-it-while-you-can experience.
Arthur Yeas works in the greenhouse and said another of its three corpse flowers bloomed in January. He said the stinky name is not overstated.
"It smelled really very bad the very first day," he said. "As it gets older, the smell begins to be more like dead pumpkin with the dead body smell mixed in."
That description is for when the smell gets better, if you didn't catch that.
"It's the worst smell that I've smelled any time in my life," Yeas said.
Here's a short video about what the flower is, filmed in January: