The Bloom Is Off the Giant Stinking Flower

It captured the hearts and assaulted the noses of thousands, but the giant rancid-smelling flower that bloomed at the Huntington Library this week has closed and its odor has faded.

On Friday, the towering purple spadix that gives the Amorphophallus titanum its name fell “like a collapsed straw with a kink in it,” said Lisa Blackburn, a spokeswoman for the library.

The flower drew an estimated 22,000 people on Monday and Tuesday, the highest two-day attendance in the institution’s 71-year history. Then the petals began to close back up, but thousands of people still came to see and smell the plant, native to Sumatra.

Considered to have the largest flower in the world, the plant will remain on display at the library’s main entrance through this weekend.

“The mighty titan has fallen,” Blackburn said. “Everybody’s wanted closure, and it has come.”