These are late in coming, but here are some photos of the corpse flower I took a week and a half ago when it was on display at the Brooklyn Botanical Gardens.

The corpse flower, or Baby, as the staff at the BBG called it, stood tall and proud in the middle of a greenhouse, cordoned off from spectators by a thin black rope. A small stream of people slowly walked around it and snapped pics before exiting out the other end of the room. I thought the corpse flower held itself without dignity throughout…

… even though, as you can see, it had a trapdoor cut into its heiney:

To answer the obvious question – no, I am afraid to report that Baby did not reek like something crawled up its spathe and died there. I did smell a faint whiff of something unpleasant, but it was probably B.O. After all, this was New York City on a 90-degree day. As it turned out, Baby had bloomed and unleashed its hotly anticipated olfactory statement during the night a few days before I went. I, of course, was a bit sad that Baby couldn’t hold it in until I finally got down to BK, but just seeing it was an amazing experience. After all, the corpse flower is like Halley’s Comet, and by the time Halley’s Comet flies around again I’ll be 81 and too busy swallowing my remaining teeth to pay attention. So Baby will have to take its place in my little bank of memories.