Lois the Corpse Flower

For those of you not in Houston, wondering at my title, let me explain. A corpse flower is a rare flower found only in Sumatra. There are a number of them owned in the United States, but there have only been 29 reported bloomings. The plant only blooms after it's at least seven years old. It's a rather large flower, standing anywhere from 6 to 10 feet tall. The name comes from the fact that when the flower blooms it smells like rotting flesh. This is to attract flesh eating beetles, which help it pollinate. Sounds enticing, doesn't it?

The Houston Museum of Natural Science is fortunate enough to own a corpse flower, which has been named Lois. We have been waiting anxiously for Lois to bloom, a feat that has taken her a couple of weeks longer than it was supposed to. Finally on Wednesday she began to bloom. Kimberly and a friend went to see Lois during the day on Friday, and Kimberly said she was very pretty. We decided we should go see her, but to avoid the crowds, we (meaning Kimberly, Scott, and I, along with James S.) went at 4:15 early Saturday morning. Which is very early. But traffic was nonexistent, we were able to find fairly close parking, and the lines to see Lois were much shorter.

Was it worth it? Judge for yourself:

I think she's beautiful and very unique.

Here's a picture of the Stink-O-Meter:
She was only at a 5. I didn't think she smelled that bad.

I'm glad we went. It was a fun adventure in the middle of the night. And who knows if I'll ever get the chance to see a corpse flower bloom again!