A Corpse Flower Named 'Li'l Stinker' Is About to Bloom Disgustingly

The corpse flower—a.k.a. Amorphophallus titanum—is named for its stench, a rotting, noxious mix that calls to mind roadkill or mildewed gym laundry. (The Latin name translates literally as "giant, misshapen phallus.") Chemical isolation of the flower's compounds reveals overlap with cheese, sweat, garlic, feces, rotting fish, and decomposing meat.

If that description sounds delicious, you're in luck! Though the corpse flower blooms unpredictably (every five to ten years) and stays open for just 24 to 36 hours, one is about to bloom any minute now at the Huntington Library, LA's storied arboretum and research behemoth. The Huntington has affably named the plant "Li'l Stinker" and has been tracking its growth as if it's a child, tweeting daily updates since July 25.

The Huntington Library holds more than 50 corpse flowers, but they've collectively bloomed only five times since 1999, according to the LA Times, most recently in 2014. Corpse flowers attract more than 10,000 visitors on years any of them bloom, and Huntington extends its normally 10 AM–5 PM visitation hours into the evening to accommodate the boom in foot traffic.

There is a reason for the stank: The horrendous smell apparently tricks bugs—like pollen-carrying carrion beetles—into mistaking them for literal rotting meat, ensuring a pollination cycle. The corpse flower hails from Sumatra and holds the record for largest unbranched inflorescence—basically that giant cluster of flowers arranged on the stem in the middle of the plant. They can grow up to ten feet in the wild, making Li'l Stinker relatively small, since it's only 42 inches tall as of July 29. But all the stench fans gathered in LA right now are hoping that its odor will be huge and putrid. Good luck to them.

Sign up for our newsletter to get the best of VICE delivered to your inbox daily.

Follow Nicole Clark on Twitter.