The corpse flower is about to bloom.

Here at the University of Wisconsin. The horrible smell only lasts for a day or 2, so I'm watching the D.C. Smith Greenhouse Facebook page to know when to run over there.  I have very little sense of smell — anosmia bad enough to have submitted to an MRI over it — so I welcome the opportunity, like a blind person facing the sun or a deaf person at a heavy metal concert.

Back in 2005, I blogged a UW corpse flower bloom: "Visiting the corpse flower with pro-sunsetters."

How did the flower smell? I thought it had a zoo smell. Maybe I've never smelled a corpse, but it didn't smell dead to me, just funky and animal-y. It wasn't at all fishy. More mouse-y. It wasn't nauseating or even terribly strong, in my opinion. I can't really understand the distinct aversion felt by the three persons who humored me by coming along.

I wasn't aware at the time that I was losing my sense of smell. From the comments, back then, Goesh said, "Botany be damned, what we have here is a burgeoning phallic cult." And I said "The scientific name for the plant is Amorphophallus Titanium. 'Amorphophallus' means 'shapeless phallus.'"