Community Corner
It's Alive! Chicago Botanic Garden's Latest Corpse Flower Blooms (VIDEO)
The garden will have special hours Tuesday and Wednesday to let visitors get a whiff of the rare plant's foul smell.

Garden staff had been observing the rare flower, known as titan arum, since last week when the plant entered its blooming cycle. The corpse flower eventually opened late Monday night, according to the garden, and it will probably stay open for about 24 to 36 hours.
More Patch Corpse Flower Coverage:
- Corpse Flower Could Bloom Soon at Chicago Botanic Garden
- Corpse Flower Fails to Bloom On Own; Forced Open by Scientists
- Corpse Flower Blooms Unexpectedly at Chicago Botanic Garden
- Another Corpse Flower Could Come Alive Soon at Chicago Botanic Garden (VIDEO)
Now that Sprout has bloomed, the garden will hold special hours to let visitors experience the flower's foul fragrance at its peak. The garden's Semitropical Greenhouse, where the corpse flower is displayed, will be open until 2 a.m. Tuesday, April 26, and from 8 a.m. to 7 p.m. Wednesday, April 27. Parking fees after 7 p.m. will be discounted to $10 for nonmembers and free for members.
Even if you can't make it to the garden, you can view Sprout thanks to a live-streaming video. Unfortunately, that video won't give you a whiff of the flower. But the garden did post early reactions concerning the smell from some visitors.
"This smells like our garbage at home after two days," Daniel Ladror, of Chicago, said.
"I’m catching a cheesey whiff. A bit of Parmesan," Joanna Wozniak said.
Keep track of Sprout's progress with the Chicago Botanic Garden's live-streaming webcam:
The botanic garden has 13 of the plants, which are native to western Sumatra, Indonesia, in its collection. Sprout shares space with Alice—the first corpse flower to bloom naturally in the Chicago area when it opened in September―and a nameless, non-flowering titan arum.
Spike, which entered its bloom cycle a month before Alice last year, needed to be manually opened by the staffso its pollen could be extracted and used to pollinate Alice.
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PHOTO: Sprout, the latest corpse flower to bloom at the Chicago Botanic Garden. (YouTube screen shot | Chicago Botanic Garden)
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