UPDATE: Rollins College has shared that the greenhouse will not be open for public viewing this year.
Rollins College will once again be host to another round of stinky flower blooms as its resident corpse plant prepares to bloom.
The corpse plant, or Amorphophallus titanum (meaning “giant misshapen penis” in Latin which also happens to be a great drag name if you’re looking), gets its name from the sickly smell that radiates from the plant once it blooms, that is very reminiscent of rotting meat. The smell attracts flies and pollinators to the flower which originates in the (probably stinky) rainforests of Sumatra.
The plants take roughly 10 years to bloom but another plant at Rollins bloomed back in 2020. Alan Chryst, the operator of the Rollins Greenhouse (Website), estimates that this year’s blooms should be opening in the next 10-12 days. Once open, the flowers can reach anywhere between 10 to 20 feet in height, though the smell is likely to reach much further.
You can watch the plant’s progress via the live feed embedded below before planning your trip to catch a whiff of the plant yourself.
