Have you ever smelled a corpse flower? Now you might be able to almost anywhere in America—although you'll probably wish you hadn't.
The flower, which comes from the Sumatran rainforest, takes a decade to form its first bloom, which lasts only a day or two. Strangely enough, half-a-dozen flowers have been spotted blooming at the same time around the country.
“A few of us are saying, ‘Well, wait a minute, how did six or seven happen all at once?’” Marc Hachadourian, director of the Nolen Greenhouses at the New York Botanical Garden, told The Wall Street Journal.
According to a study led by the University of Wisconsin-Madison, between 1889 and 2008 only 157 corpse flowers were recorded blooming.
The rare plant, which, once bloomed, releases a peculiar, intense odor ("rotting flesh-like smell," according to most), has been seen in Bloomington, Indiana; Sarasota, Florida; Washington, D.C.; St. Louis and New York.
Investigating the reason behind the simultaneous blossoms, biology professor Daniel Janzen, of the University of Pennsylvania, suggested the flowers may be related. He told the Journal that, if related, the flowers' coinciding maturation process functions as a way for "slowly maturing plants to improve their chances of cross-pollination."
In addition to its wildly unpleasant and strangely chronicled smell, the flower also boasts an interesting name: Amorphophallus titanum (literally: "giant misshapen penis"). Have you seen the flower? Clearly, the name was inspired.