While it's billed as a rare event every time it happens, the blooming of one of the Conservatory of Flowers' five "corpse flowers" happens nearly every year at this point, but you wouldn't know that from the news coverage.

Yes, last year around this time, one of the SF Conservatory of Flowers’ famed "corpse flowers" went into bloom, and as happens with every one of these blooms, it was widely covered in the local news, giving the Conservatory some free publicity and drawing long lines of curious people wanting to smell the thing.

That specimen of Titan Arum (Amorphophallus titanum), named Chanel, bloomed the first week in July. And here we are a year later, with a different plant, named Scarlet, fully in bloom this week. KRON4 covered the blooming event on Thursday, KQED breathlessly covered it earlier this week, with each report calling the bloom rare and suggesting you'd better hurry over there because it only lasts a few days. But you'll notice in the coverage that it all seems to suggest that the Conservatory of Flowers only owns one of these plants, and ignores the fact that we just did this last year — and you'll probably get another chance to smell one of these things next year if not sooner, if you missed this one.

We have seen blooms of Titan Arum flowers at the Conservatory of Flowers in 2020, 2022, 2023, and 2024, in addition to last year, because the five specimens bloom on different cycles. Younger plants reportedly bloom every seven to ten years, while more mature specimens bloom every three to five years. With five plants, that means the Conservatory may even have two of these blooms happen in a single year, as happened in the summer of 2018.

Chanel, the one that bloomed last year, seems to be on a three-year cycle, and previously bloomed in 2022.

The plants, native to Sumatra, shoot up a five-foot-high spadix surrounded by a skirt or spathe that slowly unfurls over weeks, giving off a putrid odor, similar to rotting flesh, in order to attract polinators. As seen in the life cycle diagram below, after the flowering period, the spathe produces berry-like fruits which contain seeds, and which birds eat and help disperse the seeds.

Scarlet appeared to be in full stinky bloom on Thursday, and tickets to get in to see her in the muggy West Gallery of the Conservatory of Flowers were sold out. But there are still timed tickets left for this afternoon and Saturday.

Like last year, there is a livestream from the West Gallery, which has no Smell-o-Vision so it isn't very exciting.

Previously: One of the Conservatory of Flowers' Corpse Flowers Is Now In Bloom