Giant, smelly bloom draws garden visitors

BERKELEY, Calif. - With its putrid smell, liver-colored petalsand phallic stamen, a blooming corpse flower is drawing visitors toa botanical garden in Northern California.

The 15-year-old Sumatran plant - officially called Amorphophallustitanium - bloomed for the first time Tuesday in Berkley.

It slowly unfurled its rotten-meat-scented blossom to its fullgirth: the petals spread 34 inches wide, and the thick centralstamen stands nearly four feet tall.

Only a few hundred of the plants exist. Most of them are ingardens like the University of California, Berkeley BotanicalGarden, which has about a dozen of the plants.

Unlike other flowers that rely on bees for pollination, this onecounts on flies.