Today you can walk into Nicholas Conservatory and Gardens to the sounds of gently running water, families enjoying their last outing of the summer -- and the smell of rotting flesh and stinky gym socks. The odor is coming from the titan arum, or corpse flower. It bloomed this week after a long wait.
"What does Rockford have to offer today? Well, a giant flower that smells like death," says Father Jonathon Bannon of Rockford. "But it's beautiful, it really is. It's very unique and I'm glad that Rockford has such a location where we can explore things that don't naturally grow here," he said.
Bannon was one of many visitors who came to the conservatory to see the corpse flower.
The Indonesian plant blooms every 10-20 years. And the flower only lasts for 24-48 hours.
Conservatory operations manager Leslie Crow says their plant is 15 years old, and this is the first time it has bloomed.
"We are very busy, people are very excited. It's surprising not only for us because we didn't know it was going to bloom, but just the reaction of the community, it's been great," says Crow.
Horticulture Supervisor Dan Erwin says conservatories name a corpse flower once it has bloomed. The name chosen: Grimace -- after the face many guests make when they get close to it.
Late Wednesday night Erwin used a paintbrush to pollinate Grimace with frozen pollen from the Chicago Botanical Garden's corpse flower.
"We do it because the plant can't pollinate itself. So it's designed so the female flowers open the first night, the male flowers open the second night, so the female flowers are already dying off before it creates its own pollen," Erwin explained.
A hole cut by Erwin in the lower section of the flower can still be seen. Emily Homman of Byron says she enjoyed being able to see inside the plant, and was glad to catch the rare sight while she could. "It is really cool to look at, because it only blooms for like 24 hours. So it's a special experience and after you look at it you can walk through the rest of the greenhouse," Homman said.
When the bloom ends, the tower in the middle of the flower and the leafy skirt around it will die back. If the pollination is successful, the remaining stalk will then begin producing bright colored fruit.