Botany

What's very tall, quite mysterious and tempermental, stinky, and has botanists all aflutter?  (Yep, botanists can get all aflutter.)

It's a plant called Amorphophallus titanum or more commonly, the Titan Arum.  We went to the United States Botanic Garden to check it out!  

 
The titan arum blooms infrequently - every few years or sometimes not for decades.  (This particular plant is seven years old, and this is its first bloom.)  When the titan arum does flower, it can boast of having the largest unbranched inflorescence in the world!  (Inflorescence refers to it having a head of flowers, like a sunflower, not an individual flower.)  We saw it when it was almost ready to bloom, missing the big opening by just a few days.  The flower gives off a very strong odour when it opens, giving it the nickname 'corpse flower'.  Some people describe the smell as being like roadkill or rotting flesh.  The smell serves as a way to attract dung beetles and other pollinators from long distances.

Here's a little picture of how another titan arum looked when open.  Pretty impressive on a twelve foot tall plant, eh?

You could also take a look here for more info and a time-lapse video where you see the titan arum at the Botanic Garden open up.