CLEVELAND — The Cleveland Zoo announced the flower is expected to fully close over the next 12 to 18 hours, and guests hoping to see and smell this blossom can visit tonight during the Asian Lantern Festival.
The Zoo will also open early again on Friday morning for visitors to get their last sniffs and views in.
The Cleveland Zoo’s corpse flower started blooming Wednesday afternoon, releasing its deathly odor for the next 24 to 48 hours during its short and rare blooming period.
The giant flowering titan arum is one of the largest flowering plants in the world, growing up to 10 feet tall, according to a news release from the Cleveland Metroparks Zoo.
The zoo is opening early on Thursday to give residents the chance to see – and smell – the rare occurrence for themselves. This will be only the flower’s fifth bloom in the past 28 years.
The zoo opens at 9 a.m. Thursday and guests visiting Thursday night for the zoo’s Asian Lantern Festival will also have a chance to see the flower’s bloom in the dark. The plant is located outside the rhino habitat.
The zoo is also livestreaming the bloom on their YouTube channel, though, zoo officials point out, online viewers miss out on the corpse flower’s disgustingly fragrant odor of death. If you can manage to live without that, watch the flower blooming live below:
The plant titan arum is native to the island of Sumatra. The plant spends years gathering energy before it blooms and releases a smell like death, literally. The scent is a gnarly combination akin to something like mixing Limburger cheese, garlic, rotting flesh and smelly feet together. You get the idea—it's absolutely gross. While in bloom, the plant generates heat, around 90 degrees, and its odor attracts fresh flies and carrion beetles for pollination, according to Britannica.com.
The last time the Cleveland Zoo’s corpse flower bloomed was July 2019.
Download the News 5 Cleveland app now for more stories from us, plus alerts on major news, the latest weather forecast, traffic information and much more. Download now on your Apple device here, and your Android device here.
You can also catch News 5 Cleveland on Roku, Apple TV, Amazon Fire TV, YouTube TV, DIRECTV NOW, Hulu Live and more. We're also on Amazon Alexa devices. Learn more about our streaming options here.
