---
title: "Two corpse flowers bloom at once at the Huntington, drawing thousands to San Marino"
description: "For the first time in its history, the Huntington saw two giant corpse flowers open together, an unpredictable and short-lived event that pulled thousands of visitors to San Marino to witness a bloom famous for smelling like rotting flesh."
category: "Los Angeles"
category_url: https://herald.la/category/los-angeles
author: "Arman Petrosyan"
published: 2026-07-14T09:56:00.000Z
updated: 2026-07-14T09:56:00.000Z
canonical: https://herald.la/article/two-corpse-flowers-bloom-at-once-at-the-huntington-drawing-thousands-to-san-mari
tags: ["huntington", "san marino", "botany", "corpse flower", "gardens"]
---
# Two corpse flowers bloom at once at the Huntington, drawing thousands to San Marino

For the first time in its history, the Huntington saw two giant corpse flowers open together, an unpredictable and short-lived event that pulled thousands of visitors to San Marino to witness a bloom famous for smelling like rotting flesh.

People do not usually line up for hours to smell something described as a hot dumpster on a summer day. This week in San Marino, thousands did. Two giant corpse flowers came into bloom at the same time at the Huntington Library, Art Museum, and Botanical Gardens, and the crowds came to see, and inhale, a spectacle the garden itself calls one of the rarest and shortest-lived in the plant world.

## A first for the Huntington

The simultaneous bloom was the first the institution has recorded, according to the garden. It drew [about 5,000 visitors on Sunday, with 7,000 expected Monday as tickets sold out](https://abc7.com/story/thousands-line-see-2-stinky-blooming-corpse-flowers-huntington-san-marino/19503537/). Some waited more than three hours in the summer heat, and the Huntington pushed past its usual closing time to move everyone through the line.

The plant, *Amorphophallus titanum*, or titan arum, is a botanical celebrity precisely because it is so hard to catch. [Each bloom lasts only 24 to 48 hours](https://www.nbclosangeles.com/news/local/corpse-flower-set-to-bloom-huntington-library-san-marino/3463161/) before it collapses and the plant returns to dormancy, and the flowers can rise up to 12 feet tall.

## The science of the stink

The smell is the point. As the flower opens, its towering central spike heats up and releases a cocktail of sulfur compounds that mimic decaying meat. In the rainforests of Sumatra, where the species is native, that odor is a lure: it draws carrion beetles and flesh flies that crawl inside expecting a carcass and instead carry pollen from one plant to the next.

Brandon Tam, an associate curator at the Huntington, said the effect lands differently on different noses. [Children, he said, tell him it smells like gym socks or rotten eggs; to him, "it smells like a hot dumpster on a summer's day."](https://abc7.com/story/thousands-line-see-2-stinky-blooming-corpse-flowers-huntington-san-marino/19503537/)

## A rare plant in an experienced garden

The Huntington is unusually practiced at this. [Since 1999 it has exhibited 29 corpse flower blooms, more than any other institution in the western United States](https://abc7.com/story/thousands-line-see-2-stinky-blooming-corpse-flowers-huntington-san-marino/19503537/), the product of years of patient cultivation, since a plant must store energy over many seasons before it can flower at all. Getting two to open on the same days is as much luck as horticulture.

That expertise matters beyond the spectacle. [Fewer than 1,000 of the plants are thought to remain in the wild](https://abc7.com/story/thousands-line-see-2-stinky-blooming-corpse-flowers-huntington-san-marino/19503537/), where habitat loss has thinned the species' Sumatran range. Botanical gardens that can coax the plant to bloom, and to set seed, serve as a hedge against its disappearance, even as the main draw for the crowds is simpler: a giant, foul-smelling flower that vanishes almost as fast as it appears.

## Sources

- [Thousands line up to see 2 stinky, blooming corpse flowers at the Huntington in San Marino](https://abc7.com/story/thousands-line-see-2-stinky-blooming-corpse-flowers-huntington-san-marino/19503537/)
- [Corpse flower set to bloom at the Huntington Library in San Marino](https://www.nbclosangeles.com/news/local/corpse-flower-set-to-bloom-huntington-library-san-marino/3463161/)