Most people plant flowers either for their pleasant aroma, aesthetic value or both. However, thousands of visitors recently descended upon the National Botanic Garden of Belgium outside of Brussels to catch a glimpse, and a whiff, of a rare 8-foot tall corpse flower, NBC News reports.
The plant is certainly not renowned for its pleasing odor. Instead, as its name suggests, it emits a smell that’s more analogous to rotting meat than a beautiful spring day. Despite its foul stench, the plant lured approximately 5,000 visitors the botanical garden last week, which is about 10 times the usual traffic it sees. That’s because, aside from being rare, the plant blooms very infrequently. In fact, since it came to Belgium in 2008 it has only done so three times. Still, some tourists visited in the hopes of smelling the famed flower for themselves.
“It was horrible, but I was expecting to pass out, which, in a strange way, would have been exciting,” California resident Lisa Yee told NBC. “I thought I had smelled public restrooms that were worse.”
Belgium is not the only country lucky enough to have one of these unusual plants. There are several spread throughout the U.S., and if the rumors are to be believed, the one housed at the United State Botanical Garden in Washington, D.C. is ready to bloom any moment.
While you probably wouldn’t want a corpse flower in your yard, there are some other rare flowers that are beautiful without the foul smell. For instance, Discovery notes that the purple Kurinji flowers, commonly found in India, tends to bloom only once every 12 years.
Source: Teleflora – Corpse Flower in Belgium Attracts Thousands of Visitors
