Corpse flower, anyone?

I just had to post something about this because it is so odd. I was at the Milwaukee Public Museum today and luckily for us (I guess it was lucky??) we showed up right after the corpse flower bloomed. Now what is a corpse flower, you might ask? Well here is some info on it:

"Best known for its strong putrid smell, Titan arum (corpse flower) emits an odor that has been compared with the smell of rotting flesh and can be detected from half a mile away. The odor helps the plant attract insects that carry its pollen to other titan arums, since corpse flowers can't pollinate themselves. The blooming of a titam arum has only happened about 150 times anywhere in the world."

And it really does stink!! I didn't have my camera but here is a picture of it from the museum's website, you can see from the woman standing behind it that it is HUGE - several feet tall and 2 or 3 feet across. GROSS! Connor just gave me a look like let's get the heck out of here, so we didn't stay long. The room was like 85 degrees too, whish made the "corpse" smell even worse.



Now I am guessing all of you who live outside of WI and don't get to see this are pretty jealous right now, aren't you? :)