Thousands of visitors are clamoring to catch a glimpse—or a nausea-inducing whiff—of a corpse flower at the US Botanic Garden in Washington, DC, during its rare and fleeting bloom on Tuesday and Wednesday. In the garden’s Tropics house, visitors swarm the plant like flies to honey. But the corpse flower is no sweet-smelling bloom: it’s so-named for giving off the putrid smell of rotting flesh, and is considered the stinkiest plant in the world.

Luckily for those of us less excited about the corpse flower’s odor, the worst of the stench is over, but the bloom is still beautiful. A corpse flower, or Amorphophallus titanum, blooms for only two to three days every two to three years, with the smell hitting its peak shortly after the plant opens. This corpse flower started blooming on Tuesday

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