Sorry today’s blog post is so late, but I had a busy day! (Lots of photos below!!)

Yesterday (8/19), the corpse flower at the Denver Botanic Gardens (DBG) bloomed! This is a big deal. This is the first bloom this plant has produced, and it is 15 years old. The blooms only last 24-48 hours, and the plants only bloom (on average) every 7-10 years. There are two “corpse flowers” in Sumatra (the only place they can be found), this is the Amorphophallus titanium corpse flower… the other one isn’t related and none are housed at the DBG. Dan got off work a little early (about 4:30) so that we could go see it. We got there, and there was a sign saying the wait would be 4+ hours… yes, HOURS! It’s a flower… so, no thank you? Turned out, it was kind of a good thing we didn’t go. Dan needed to be at work at 6am today, and people that got to DBG at 8pm didn’t get to the flower until 1:30am. That would have sucked.

Today (8/20) was my pre-op appointment. My appointment was at 2pm, so Dan got out of work early so he could go with me. After the appointment, since we were about halfway to the DBG, we decided to go check on the wait time for the flower. We got a spot in the garage, which was a good sign (it was full yesterday), and the chalkboard said one hour! After purchasing our tickets, however, we hear the wait is only about twenty minutes!!!!! YAY!!!! In reality, it was closer to forty minutes… either way it’s been wayyyy better than four hours! Then, after seeing the corpse flower, we decided to do a quick wandering around the DBG (since we had to pay the full admission price anyway).

Here are some photos of the corpse flower:

Center: Corpse Flower; Relatives (counter clockwise from top left): Flamingo Lily, Golden Pathos, Dumb Cane, Jack-in-the-Pulpit, Swiss Cheese Plant, Peace Lily, Calla Lily

The yellow flags on the ruler show how tall the plant was on a given day (one day per flag)

The tree on the right is the tree phase of the corpse flower!

Here are a few photos from around the gardens:

We thought it was really cool that these are level with the water’s surface, and you can see the surface tension against the edge

This is called “Water Lettuce”

As we were leaving, we stopped to chat with a volunteer. She said that today, especially the middle of the day because it was so warm, was a much better choice than yesterday… Yesterday, twelve THOUSAND people visited the park, mostly to see the flower! Crazy amount of people! I’m definitely glad we visited at one of the hottest times of day (which was up there, but not too bad) because, as we were leaving this evening, the line was already up to a two hour wait with tons of people still streaming into the gardens!

If you see any photos you would like to purchase, please contact me via Etsy, and I can create a custom listing for you! Let me know you saw it in this post, and tell me which photo by telling me which of the two sections it’s in and how far from the top.