But one is blooming right now in New York City at Barnard College's Arthur Ross Greenhouse, for the first time in a decade. .

The stream launched on May 27 after the corpse plant began to bloom.

titanum arrived at the Barnard greenhouse seven years ago, a gift from the Brooklyn Botanical Garden.

Under the care of greenhouse horticulturist Nicholas Gershberg, the Barnard corpse plant now weighs more than 40 lbs.

(18 kg) and sports a flower standing over 5 feet (1.5 meters) tall, said greenhouse director Hilary Callahan, a professor of biological sciences at Barnard.

The plant began to bloom in April, with a leaf-wrapped cylindrical stalk poking straight up from the center, and grew to its current height in about two months, Callahan told Live Science.

It takes about seven to 10 years for a corpse plant to generate its first bloom, depending on the availability of resources like sunlight and water from year to year, Callahan said.

It sends another green shoot up into the sunlight the following year, and the cycle repeats until the plant becomes sexually mature and is ready to flower — though the process that sends that signal is still not well understood, Callahan said.

As the bloom's fabulous "costume" unfurled on Sunday (May 31), it unleashed the pungent, trademark odor that earned it the name "corpse plant." The distinctive smell lingers for just a few days, and though Callahan described the scent as "funky" and "very complex," she added that it was not necessarily offensive or unpleasant.

And if conditions are favorable, it just may bloom again within a few years, Callahan said.