Named Morphy, the titan arum housed at Dartmouth College began opening on Friday afternoon at the Ivy League college’s life sciences greenhouse. The 7 ½-foot (2.3-metre) flower is expected to be fully open on Saturday before it starts to collapse the next day.

The college in New Hampshire has even set up a webcam to enable people to monitor its progress.

Morphy has a long pointy stalk with a skirt-like covering. It’s green on the outside and deep red on the inside when it opens.

Kim DeLong, the greenhouse manager at Dartmouth, said Morphy was starting to smell like a burning cigar on Friday afternoon. At full strength, its odor has been described as a cross between a decaying animal and urine.

https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2016/sep/24/giant-corpse-flower-begins-to-bloom-for-first-time-in-five-years