BUFFALO, N.Y. — A stench is flowing through the Buffalo Botanical Gardens courtesy of a flower that only blooms every six to 10 years.
Visitors will get the chance to see and smell the rare blossom of the corpse flower.
Morty Jr., as the flower is known, will be in full bloom any day now. Just follow the flies to house two and you will find the foul-smelling corpse flower along with his siblings Wednesday and Pugsley.
Indigenous to the rainforests of Indonesia, Morty Jr. is one of five corpse flowers the Buffalo Botanical Gardens has in-house. He started as a small leaf from another flower named Fester and surprisingly grew to 3 feet in just a year.
The plant smells the worst within 24-36 hours of blossoming into a beautiful but stinky purple-colored flower and officials say it draws the biggest crowds bringing in thousands of people.
“It is really exciting because people are excited about plants and that’s what we love to see here at the gardens," said Erin Grajek, Botanical Gardens' chief operating officer. "Our mission is to connect people to plants, so if we can do it through the stinkiest guy in our collection, we love it because then visitors come out and they see the rest of our collection and enjoy this guy on their way out."
The last time the gardens had a corpse flower in bloom was in 2018, so again, a rare sight to see.