Watch Rare Corpse Flower Bloom In Tucson

TUCSON, AZ – Her name is Rosie and she smells awful. That's okay because she is a corpse flower, named because her odor smells like a decaying corpse.

Rosie lives at the Tucson Botanical Gardens. Her latin name is the Amophopallus Titanum and she is one of the rarest – and largest – flowering plants.

And she is getting ready to bloom

Corpse flowers usually take seven to 10 years to bloom and, in many cases, take decades. (Get Tucson Patch's daily newsletter and real-time news alerts. Or, find your local Patch here and subscribe).

And when they finally bloom, it only lasts between 24 and 36 hours.

That's why the staff at Tucson Botanical Gardens is so exited.

Knowing that there are lots of botanical fans out there who will not be able to make it in person to Tucson, the Gardens has set up a live-stream that you can watch here:

The Gardens says that Rosie is about three-feet tall and about 9 years old. She was a gift to the gardens from the University of California-Fullerton.

She hadn't been expecting her to bloom for at least another two years.

Once she does, she will produce small reddish fruit that wlll take another six months to ripen. Once that happens, botanists will take the seeds and try to grow more plants, and also share some seeds with other botanical gardens.

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Photo via Tucson Botanical Gardens.