Rare corpse flower blooms at San Diego Botanic Garden

SAN DIEGO (FOX 5/KUSI) — A rare sight -- a flower that blooms once every seven to 10 years and only stays bloomed for two days, emitting a foul odor -- the San Diego Botanic Garden's corpse flower has bloomed, the garden announced on Tuesday afternoon.

If you want to see the corpse flower at the San Diego Botanic Garden, time is ticking. The rare flower smells like rotting flesh, hence the name, and only stays bloomed for two days.

The public has been on watch since the Botanic Garden announced the impending bloom in late August.

This is the first bloom from this specific corpse plant that was donated to the Botanic Garden in 2016, the garden said.

The Botanic Garden will extend its hours to midnight on Tuesday, the first night of the bloom. The garden will extend its hours for the second night of the bloom as well.

The corpse flower only blooms once every seven to 10 years during its first bloom and every four to five years after that, and smells like rotting flesh. It’s special not only because it’s endangered, but it only gives off its rancid scent for 48 hours. Then it will start to close up over the next three to four days and slowly decay.

The corpse flower is listed as Endangered by the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN), with an estimated 1,000 remaining in the wild. IUCN estimates the population has declined more than 50% over the past 150 years.

The corpse flower is currently on display in the Dickinson Family Education Conservatory at the San Diego Botanic Garden, located at 300 Quail Gardens Drive in Encinitas, in northern San Diego County.

The corpse flower will remain on display at the Botanic Garden during regular daytime hours until it decays. Tickets are required. SDBG Members receive free admission.

Last year, the garden's other corpse flowers bloomed just a few weeks apart.

For more information on the San Diego Botanic Garden, visit sdbg.org.