‘Corpse’ Flower at Franklin Park Ready to Bloom

(Photo by Anne Vickman)

If you’re lucky enough to get Bunker Hill Day off today, get yourself (and your kids!) over to the Franklin Park Zoo. Why, you ask? Because they have the flora equivalent of a solar eclipse crossed with a panda birth crossed with The Walking Dead zombies: Morticia, a 200-pound, five-foot tall flower that smells like a rotting corpse is about to bloom. Yes! A flower that smells like a dead human body!

As our associate editor Anne Vickman noted last week:

Amorphophallus titanum, native to Indonesia, can go 7 to 10 years without blooming and requires specific environmental conditions for a flower to occur. When they do, the blossoms can be up to nine feet tall and six feet across, and give off a rather pungent aroma.

Lovely. According to the Twitter feed of the New England Zoo, Morticia has yet to open up, but is “starting to smell.” And since the flowers only bloom for 24 to 48 hours, time is of the essence. Thankfully, the zoo is holding free extended hours from 8 a.m. – 9:30 a.m., and 6 p.m. – 8 p.m, daily, waiting for the bloom. Until then, follow the #MorticiaWatch tweets for pictures, updates, and pictures. Also: General Addams Family humor. People, apparently, can’t help themselves.