Officials expect the rare flower will bloom this week, oozing smells similar to rotting meat before returning to a vegetative state for years.

According to the college's greenhouse supervisor, Max Thompson, a corpse flower will bloom on campus next week. It is hard to pin down the precise blooming time, but Thompson predicts it will happen by Wednesday. Once it blooms, the greenhouse will be open from 9 a.m. to 4 p.m. for guests to take in the rare view and smell.

In 1878, Italian botanist Odoardo Beccari came across the enormous plant growing in the rainforests of Sumatra, a large island in western Indonesia. The specimen he recorded had a circumference of around 5 feet, and its height was around 10 feet.

UC Davis Botanical Conservatory Manager Ernesto Sandoval checks out the corpse flower at full bloom. Corpse Bride, meet the corpse flowers at the UC Davis Botanical Conservatory. The largest bloom in the world, the titan arum (Amorphophallus titanum ...