Giant Corpse Flower Spreads its Stink in Washington [Live stream]

The U.S. Botanic Garden Conservatory in Washington D.C just got stinky as the long-awaited corpse flower or Titan arum began blossoming Sunday afternoon.

The flower is estimated to remain open for about 24 to 48 hours. Garden officials said that the peak smell of the flower would be on Monday morning. The garden will be extending its hours of operation on Monday until 8 p.m.

Check out the live streaming at the conservatory in a video provided by the U.S. Botanic Garden:

Stream videos at Ustream

The flower, Titan arum is native to the tropical rain forests of Sumatra, Indonesia. It is huge,  sometimes reaching up to nine feet in height.

 The last time the flower in the Conservatory bloomed, was in 2007. The plant produces heat along with a smell that resembles the stench of a rotting corpse. The heat spreads the stink and attracts insects. However, the ten-year-old flower has not only attracted insects but has also fascinated humans.

"Just in the same way that a lovely smelling plant, like a rose, is attracting a bee or another kind of insect with what we would consider a very nice smell, to pollinate it, this particular plant has the strategy of using a horrible, fetid smell to attract insects," said Ari Novy, the public programs manager at the garden, reported the Associated Press. "So this plant is essentially tricking those kinds of insects into coming, having a party inside of the plant and the flower and pollinating it and then moving on."

"It's just got everything for a good mystery. It's cryptic. It's exotic. The timing is off. It's inconsistent. It's inconsiderate. It's got all those great things. It's from far away, and it smells bad, and people get interested," Novy told The Associated Press.

Earlier this month, people in Brussels got to look and smell a specimen of the flower which is preserved in the National Botanic Garden of Belgium. That flower bloomed thrice in the last five years, making it a rare case.