Dead center: A rare blooming “corpse plant” drew crowds to a campus greenhouse in mid-March, with many visitors waiting more than an hour to sample its stinky scent. One of just 140 to bloom in recorded history, Cornell’s Amorphophallus titanum was dubbed Wee Stinky (after the campus stream known as Wee Stinky Glen) in a CALS poll. In the wild, the plant—which shifts from female to male during its two-day blooming cycle—uses its noxious odor to attract carrion insects to serve as pollinators. Asked why it had caused such a stir, plant biology grad student Gwynne Lim summed it up this way: “It’s big, it’s beautiful—and it’s weird.”.