Yesterday night we had the privilege to see a blooming titan arum (
Amorphophallus titanum), the largest flower on Earth, in the botanical garden's greenhouse at
Planten un Blomen, a nearby park in the center of Hamburg. Privilege because it took years to start blooming and already the same night it collapsed again. The titan arum is also known as the corpse flower or stinky plant, and it really deserves the name, it smells like rotting meat to attract beetles for its pollination.
A historical illustration from
Kosmos Handweiser für Naturfreunde 1934 depicts how large this flower could grow, the one we saw reached "only" 163cm.
The website of the Botanic Garden Hamburg has some more
pictures of the progress since July 2, additional information in German can be found
there.
Also the United States Botanic Garden at Washington D.C.
expects a titan arum to bloom about every day now.
Update:
There's a
time lapse video of the Hamburg titanum blooming.
The U.S. Botanic Garden one bloomed July 21st to 22nd and there's also a
time lapse video. Very pretty.