Corpse Flower

The Missouri Botanical Garden has been blessed, or cursed, this season with two corpse flowers, titun arums.  I missed the first one, but T and I went to Mobot's special late-night hours to see the second one during the peak of its stinkiness.

And that is certainly how it earned its nickname, the corpse flower.  I've never smelled a corpse, but I imagine it's something like this.

The problem was that we weren't the only people reading our emails and showing up at the Linnean House just before bed.  The line was about three times as long as the building, and not moving an inch.  So instead we just walked around the back and peeked in the window.  Some of the windows were open, which let enough of the stench out that we were glad we weren't inside after all!