Hundreds line up outside abandoned California gas station for whiff of rare, smelly ‘corpse flower’

When the owner of a rare corpse flower hauled the plant to an abandoned gas station in the San Francisco Bay Area, hundreds of curious neighbors lined up to meet the really big — and really stinky plant.

Amorphophallus titanum, also called corpse flowers, can grow up to 10 feet tall and stink like rotting flesh, though the smell is clearly not enough to keep crowds away.

Solomon Leyva, a nursery owner in Alameda, California, saw his own corpse flower had bloomed and he decided to share it with the public by putting it in a wagon and wheeling it to an abandoned gas station.

Soon enough, lines formed Mas Levya sat in a camping chair and answered questions about the plant, which takes an average of seven to 10 years to bloom for the first time, according to the San Francisco Conservatory of Flowers.

“Everyone is commenting to me that the last time they’ve seen this was in San Francisco, and there was a barrier, and they had to wait for hours, and they weren’t allowed to get near it,” Leyva told the San Francisco Chronicle. “I think everyone’s tripping out that they can walk up and wiggle it and smell it.”

Levya had been documenting the growth of his corpse plant on Instagram.

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A post shared by Solomon Nomolos (@solomon_square)

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A post shared by Solomon Nomolos (@solomon_square)

The San Francisco Conservatory of Flowers has its own corpse flower named “Terra the Titan.” After Terra bloomed in 2017, the conservatory announced she would bloom again in August 2020. Fans were allowed to watch the flower’s growth on a 24/7 livestream. It was the first time one of the conservatory’s corpse flowers bloomed for the second time.

Conservatory employees at the time said Terra smelled more like rotting cabbage than rotting flesh.

Contributing: The Associated Press

Contact News Now Reporter Christine Fernando at [email protected] or follow her on Twitter at @christinetfern.

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