Hold your nose, St. Paul. Horace the giant corpse flower is about to bloom — his first grand reveal since arriving at Como Park Zoo and Conservatory in 2019 — and he’ll be making his pungent debut in person and on live stream.

What makes a corpse flower’s bloom special? The smell is best described by its name. Corpse flowers can grow leaf structures up to 15 feet tall and hail from the island of Sumatra, Indonesia. They are best known for their stink, which is in full effect on the rare occasion they unfurl their massive floral structure.

The flowers bloom for just two or three days once every year or two, at best, and sometimes just once a decade.

A corpse flower in bloom at the California Academy of Sciences’ Osher Rainforest in San Francisco, Wednesday, Feb. 28, 2024. In St. Paul, Horace the giant corpse flower is about to bloom at Como Park Zoo and Conservatory. (AP Photo/Jeff Chiu)

You can sniff Horace’s fetid odor at the Como Exhibit Gallery daily from 10 a.m. to 6 p.m., or tune into the live stream and watch others brave Horace’s stink, and get more information, at comozooconservatory.org/horace.

The plant’s livestream feed can currently be viewed on YouTube.

While at the Marjorie McNeely Conservatory, visitors also can take in the summer flower show, which opened May 3 featuring cherry red and pink annuals, and this weekend’s Mother’s Day Bonsai show, which runs from 10 a.m. to 6 p.m. on Saturday and Sunday and is hosted by the Minnesota Bonsai Society.

Horace takes his name from landscape architect Horace Cleveland, who designed much of the Twin Cities’ urban park systems. Fewer than 1,000 individual corpse flowers remain in the wild.

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