Standing at attention, surrounded by admirers, “Stinky” the corpse flower shows no sign of being a drama queen.
But in the next few days, the thick 5-foot-tall stalk, with its wrap of burgundy flora, will begin to rot before collapsing in a heap.
By then the plant will have helped the Denver Botanic Gardens to a record-breaking day, with 12,000 paying customers visiting Wednesday, the largest number in its history.
At noon Thursday, visits were still brisk, with an additional 3,000 standing in line for up to an hour to see — and get a whiff of — the plant at the gardens’ Orangery greenhouse.
New memberships also ticked up by several hundred over the two days, said Erin Bird, gardens’ spokeswoman.
At one point .
With its reputation for producing a smell like a rotting corpse, the 15-year-old corpse flower, native to Indonesia, surprised some with a smell that was hard to detect.
“I did expect it to smell bad, but I’m not disappointed. I didn’t want to smell it,” said Felicity Florescu, 17.
Rylie Caldwell, 31, who came to the gardens with her husband Bryan, 38, jokingly said she noticed a pungent odor “like my husband’s socks.”
Some were disappointed, however, and employees heard a number of complaints from people expecting the smell of death, said Aaron Sedivy, a Botanic Gardens horticulturist.
The plant had its most pungent day Wednesday, the first day of its blooming, with a smell like the carcass of “a chicken in a trash bag inside a metal garbage can left outside for a sunny few days,” he said.
Even then, because so much air was circulating through the passageway where viewers gathered, the odor was weak enough that visitors were directed to a vent at the rear of the building where a sign suggested they “smell here.”
Because Stinky hails from Indonesia’s remote jungles, “there is little data about its life cycle,” Sedivy said. It will be several years before it blooms again.
The plant draws insects into rows of small flowers, with its putrid smell of decay. The bugs then pollinate the flower, enabling reproduction.
Bird said pollen gathered from the plant is being sent to Chicago, where it will pollinate a corpse flower at the Chicago Botanic Garden.
The bloom had begun to close Thursday, when the gardens were scheduled to remain open until midnight.
The gardens will be open from 9 a.m. to 9 p.m. Friday.
Tom McGhee: 303-954-1671, tmcghee@denverpost.com
