Font Size

Water Cooler

E-mail

Close Window E-mail This Page

The Stinky Rise Of The Corpse Flower

Required fields are marked with an asterisk(*)

Recipient E-mail:*
- Your Name:*
- Your E-mail:*
Add a Message:
Send me a copy of this e-mail.

Type the characters in this picture:*

Click here to refresh with new letters

The information you provide will be used only to send the requested e-mail and will not be used to send any other e-mail communications. Read more in our Privacy Policy

Send E-mail

Print Share + Comments

Jun 3, 2005 2:55 pm US/Eastern

The Stinky Rise Of The Corpse Flower

MADISON, Wis. (AP) ―

Click to enlarge 1 of 1: Another corpse flower, which bloomed at the University of Connecticut in 2004.

Close

numSlides of totalImages

Related Links

Learn More About The Corpse Flower

Big Bucky's back. The rare, big and extremely stinky flower that caused a sensation at the University of Wisconsin-Madison when it last bloomed in 2001 could become the world's largest flower when it blooms again next week.

The titan arum stood at 6 feet, 4 inches Thursday in a UW-Madison greenhouse, on pace to rival the world record for cultivated flowers when it blooms and releases its trademark roadkill scent in the coming days.

Botanists hope it will surpass the record of nearly 9 feet set by a titan arum in Germany two years ago.

The university is bracing for thousands of curious visitors hoping to catch a glimpse and even a whiff of the rock star of the botanical world, known as the "corpse flower," native to the rain forests of Sumatra, Indonesia.

In 2001, Big Bucky's bloom drew some 20,000 visitors who waited in long lines to see the spectacle and caused the university's Web site to crash under an onslaught of visitors seeking live updates. Botanists were disappointed when the bloom fell just three inches short of the world record, which at the time had held since 1932.