Why the corpse flower seems like it’s always blooming

Good morning, it’s Tuesday, July 14, and a heat advisory continues to be in effect. Drink lots of water!

There is currently a big commotion at the Huntington Gardens in San Marino. Here is a relevant text I received from a friend last week:

"TWO blooms and they still are perpetuating this 'sooo rare' narrative? Something's fishy about it, I tell you! On TOP of the flower stench."

She was referring, of course, to the famously foul-smelling Amorphophallus titanum, better known as the "corpse flower," which has become a sort of de-facto mascot for the Gardens. 

The giant phallic flower, which is native to the rainforests of Sumatra in Indonesia, stands between 6 and 12 feet tall and blooms but once every four to six years. Thanks to deforestation and poaching, it is estimated that there may only be about 500 left in the wild. 

At the Huntington, which acquired a corpse flower in 1999, the rare bloom always leads to a flurry of media coverage — and a huge jump in attendance at the gardens. (Two bloomed this year, and during three visits over the past week, the Huntington was abuzz. The gift shop offered a corpse flower enamel pin set. The coffee shop sold limited-edition sugar cookies printed with a corpse flower for $8 apiece. I saw a patron wearing a vintage corpse flower T-shirt.)

Annabel Adams, the Huntington’s vice president of communications, told me it's consistently their biggest draw, bringing in crowds double or triple the average turnout, with visitors willing to wait in long lines to catch a whiff of this rare occurrence.

But how rare is it really?