© Kathy Willens/Associated PressLike a decomposing body, the inside of the flower heats up to help distribute the smell.
On Friday morning, visitors to New York's botanical garden in the Bronx gathered together and began to sniff. They were there to witness one of the world's largest and smelliest flowers - Amorphophallus titanum, also known as the corpse flower - bloom.
"It smells like lettuce when you take it out of the bag," a woman yelled from the crowd of onlookers in the Enid A Haupt conservatory. "It smells like the aquarium. Like the penguin enclosure," another added. The odor came in waves as onlookers jostled for the best spot to take photos and selfies with the giant flower. Some left holding their noses.
Kathryn, an 11-year-old plant enthusiast, said it smelled like her cat's litter box but sharper. Her six-year-old brother, Toby, said it smelled worse than "one thousand pukes". Like many others, the young girl watched an online live stream of the plant all week anxiously waiting for its petals to open.
Friday marked the first time the flower, which takes around a decade to bloom and then dies after 24-36 hours, appeared in the city since 1939. The blooming was highly anticipated due to the "gross-out factor" and the flower's rarity, said Marc Hachadourian, director of the Nolen Greenhouses at the garden. Its petals began to creep open on Thursday afternoon.
The corpse flower uses its foul smell to attract pollinators which typically feed on dead animals. Like a decomposing body, the inside of the flower heats up to help distribute the smell. Its insides are colored blood red.
Lolita Gross, a surgical physicians assistant, traveled from New Jersey to see the flower out of both reverence and curiosity. "I wanted to be able to see it in my lifetime," she said. "But also I work in medicine, so I know what bad smells are, and I wanted to see if it smelled like what they say it smells like." To her, it smelled like "faint dead animal".
Nurses Allie Pace and Marilyn Demelo speculated that it smelled like feces or gangrene. "It's not nearly as bad as some of the things we've smelled," Pace said with a laugh.
Indigenous to Sumatra in Indonesia, the 6ft tall flower's first appearance in the western hemisphere was in the Bronx in 1937.
For a time the corpse flower was the official flower of the Bronx, though it was changed to the daylily in 2000, according to the garden. Two Bronx locals seemed to disagree over the change.
"The corpse flower - what kind of PR is that for the Bronx?" Bob Matte, a lifelong native of the borough, joked. Stephen Miele, a semiconductor executive, thought the flower's reputation and uniqueness matched the neighborhood. "This is absolutely not something seen everywhere. They don't have this in Brooklyn," Miele said. "The Brooklyn botanical garden - give me a break."
About 10 years ago, there was a movement to get more Amorphophallus titanum in cultivation, Hachedorian said. As a result, there's a cluster of blooms happening. In the coming days, corpse flowers in Washington DC, Bloomington, Indiana and Sarasota, Florida, are expected to bloom. One bloomed earlier this year in Chicago.
Hype over the flower was widespread online, with anxious Twitter users watching the live stream. A Twitter Moment asked whether it was a "metaphor for 2016" and the presidential election. It even had a cameo in Netflix's upcoming Gilmore Girls trailer.
"That plant - people line up to see it even though it smells like dead fish," Lorelai said in the trailer.
- This article was amended on 30 July 2016 to correctly identify the location of a corpse flower that is expected to bloom in the coming days. The flower in question is in Bloomington, Indiana, not Indianapolis as originally stated.
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