USBG Corpse Flower: July 16

It’s day six of my daily visits to Washington, DC’s US Botanical Garden’s corpse flower to view and photograph it. For the past five days (July 11, July 12, July 13, July 14, and July 15), I tried to take photos from the same spots, so that I could compare to photos from previous visits. However last night, the final green petal, which could be seen on the right in many of my previous photos, fell. When it did, it revealed where the spathe overlaps itself and thus where the spathe will open up when it blossoms. Thus, this morning the USBG rotated the plant’s pot so that it would open up to the front and in view of it’s stationary cameras. This of course makes sense, but it completely messed up my ability to take the photos in the same place to capture the same parts of the plant. Oh, well. However as the petal fell, there really is no point of reference to compare to previous days’ photos. The plant should bloom very soon, and it is still growing. The USBG’s executive director was speaking while I was there, and she said that it grew eight inches today. Finally, to answer what everyone is curious about, there still is no smell.