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To: Sarkie who wrote (10897)	8/3/1999 9:45:00 AM
From: SIer formerly known as Joe B.	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 62549

Rare Flower Opens In California With Big Stink Tuesday August 3 9:29 AM ET dailynews.yahoo.com By Michael Miller SAN MARINO, Calif. (Reuters) - Thousands of people, holding their noses to ward off a putrid odor, flocked to witness a rare botanical event -- the blooming of a tropical plant called a corpse flower. Known in its native Sumatra, Indonesia, as Bunga Bangkai, or corpse flower, the specimen at the Huntington Library and Botanical Gardens is only the 11th to bloom in the United States since being introduced to the country in 1937, and the first ever in California. The ''big stink,'' as it is affectionately known to the botanists at the Huntington, started to open up Sunday night -- an event that had been widely heralded by local media for weeks. However the flower, whose botanical name is Amorphophallus Titan Arum, has a very short bloom time and it is expected to start closing up Wednesday. As it approached its bloom, the plant grew 4 inches a day. With a phallus-like pod, or spadix, standing about 6 feet, tall, and a crimson petal, or spathe, 2 feet wide, it attracted thousands of people to the gardens Monday. But while all agreed it gave off a putrid odor, few could agree on what kind of smell it was. ''I think it's a case of all smells to all people,'' said Kathy Musial, curator of the plant collection, as visitors, some wearing masks or clothes-pins to cover their noses, milled around the huge plant. Some visitors said it smelled like a dead rat or some other kind of animal, others opted for dirty socks or rotting vegetables, while one woman said it reminded her of her son's sneakers. Musial opted for dirty socks, noting she had passed a dead skunk on the road as she drove to work Monday morning, ''and this plant doesn't smell half as bad as that.'' The corpse flower plant was sent to the Huntington gardens in March by Mark Dimitt of the Arizona Sonora Desert Museum, who had started growing it from a seed in 1993. The plant's native habitat is in the tropical rain forests of Sumatra. The first record of it blooming outside Sumatra was at the Royal Botanic Gardens in Kew, England, in 1889. The first time it bloomed in the United States was at the New York Botanic Gardens in 1937, where it caused a sensation. It was immediately named the official flower of The Bronx -- not because of its smell but because its rapid growth rate reminded officials of the fast growing New York borough where the Botantic Gardens are located. Although known as the world's largest flower, the corpse flower is in fact thousands of tiny flowers. Its repulsive scent, which is stronger at night than during the day, is intended to attract pollinators, which in Sumatra are thought to be carrion beetles and sweat bees. As for that smell. It reminded this reporter of rotting cabbages with just a slight hint of city garbage and a nuance of eau de sweaty feet.