Daily Times

A Southern California nature centre has a flower that smells deathly.

Amorphophallus titanum, better known as the “corpse flower,” emits a decaying flesh smell during its once-a-decade bloom.

Staff members at the Fullerton Arboretum’s Nature Centre noticed their flower started blooming on Monday. The process lasts 24 to 48 hours and can stretch the plants to 10 feet.

The centre plans to keep its flower on display until Tuesday.

The plant is native to an island in western Indonesia.

Amorphophallus titanum, known as the titan arum, is a flowering plant with the largest unbranched inflorescence in the world. The titan arum’s inflorescence is not as large as that of the talipot palm, Corypha umbraculifera, but the inflorescence of the talipot palm is branched rather than unbranched.

Due to its odour, which is like the smell of a rotting corpse or carcass, the titan arum is characterised as a carrion flower, and is also known as the corpse flower, or corpse plant. For the same reason, the title corpse flower is also attributed to the genus Rafflesia which, like the titan arum, grows in the rainforests of Sumatra, Indonesia and Malaysian Borneo in Sabah and Sarawak.