I have finally seen, and smelled, a corpse flower! I saw one at the United States Botanic Garden in Washington, D.C. but that was before it bloomed. I had another chance to see, and smell, one blooming at the University of Minnesota’s St. Paul campus where I worked in 2016. It was a 10 minute walk from my office to the Biological Sciences Conservatory, alas, it was winter. And I had to look up what the weather was like the one or two days I might have seen it: high of 16? No wonder I did not go. Ten minutes in below freezing temperatures? No thanks.
This story of our visit to The Huntington Library, Art Museum & Botanical Gardens is a bit interesting. I saw a notice from The Huntington that their corpse flower was getting ready to blossom. They gave a two week window of their best guess, between July 14th and July 31st. Since I work a part time job in the morning, I had to arrange a visit so that it didn’t affect my job. We chose August 1st as our day to go take a look, and smell the flower as that would typically be a better day for me work-wise. I proceeded to monitor the live stream on YouTube as well as the Huntington’s Facebook page and on Wednesday July 30th, Green Boy began to open. I’m not sure why they name these flowers but this one was given the name Green Boy. The last time Green Boy blossomed was in 2021.
Since corpse flowers only stay open a short time, between 24 and 48 hours, we decided to go on Thursday July 31st just to have the chance to see this rare flower blooming, and don’t forget the smell! We had to purchase our entry tickets for August 1st because they require this for Fridays thru Sundays. And it turned out that my workload was such that we could also go on Thursday just to see, and smell, that rare flower, eat lunch and head home.
This particular corpse flower had a very short window and it peaked early Thursday morning July 31st. From what I’ve read, the strongest smell is when it is fully open so that likely happened at 2:00 a.m. Thursday morning. And what a crowd The Huntington had that day! We got in the security line, then another line to buy our tickets and finally, the longest line to see the flower. Luckily that line was mostly shaded as it was already rather warm at 10:30 a.m. I think it took 20 minutes to get inside the conservatory. We took a look around the rest of the conservatory and following are photos from Thursday’s outing. First the corpse flower along with part of the line we waited in.
The next gallery contains more lovely plants and flowers that we found in the conservatory.
Next, a gallery of water lilies and the environs of the lily ponds that we saw on both days. In the lily ponds were the tallest water lilies I have ever seen. I’ve only ever seen the other kind, where the blooms don’t venture much past their greenery so what a treat to see a new kind of water lily. I’ve since learned that they are lotus and not a water lily at all, though both are aquatic plants:
We went back the following day to see the rest of the things we wanted to see since we paid our admission in advance. Our plan was to get there when they opened at 10:00 a.m., tour the desert garden, the palm garden and the lily ponds. Then eat lunch in their cafe and visit the Scott Galleries of American Art after lunch. We did a quickie tour of this museum when we visited in February 2024 and I wanted to go back to see more. Walking around in the heat really wore us out so we decided to check out more of the museum another time and headed home after lunch.
Following are some galleries of photos I took on our second day. Their cactus gardens are the biggest I’ve ever seen and there were many cacti in bloom. First, a gallery of cacti.
One last gallery of other things we saw at The Huntington.
If you’re in the Los Angeles area and enjoy gardens, do pay a visit to the The Huntington Library, Art Museum & Botanical Gardens. I have a feeling you would really enjoy it. And there’s more than just gardens. There is a link at the beginning of this post of their website. If you’d like more information about the corpse flower, click this link at their website. At this same link there’s another link to see the time lapse they created of the corpse flower blooming, or click here to see that.
travels with toby 