“Get ready for another big stink:

A new, huge “corpse flower” is expected to bloom this week at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.

Last year’s bloom of a Titan arum drew tens of thousands of visitors to the UW Botany Department greenhouse to see the exotic plant whose rare, purplish flower can grow as big as 4 feet wide – and many times that size in its native habitat, the Indonesian rain forests.

Fewer than 15 blooms had been recorded in the United States before last year’s flower at UW, which tied the record at 101 inches tall.

The new corpse flower is from a plant that came from the same seed source as the other one and has been at UW for about seven years. It grew 14 inches in a week and is now 59 inches tall and growing.

It grows from a tuber that can weigh up to 170 pounds, and it gets its name for the stench it puts out to attract carrion beetles, dung beetles and sweat bees to pollinate it.” Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel [via higgy]

I posted a blink to the story, and a live webcam, the last time one bloomed last year. The flower will reportedly again get a web presence, sans smell, this time around.