UPDATE June 19: Tammy the Titan's bloom is fading. The Botanical Conservatory will be open until 5.30 tonight. Starting tomorrow (June 20), the conservatory goes back to normal hours, 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. weekdays.

UPDATE June 18: The UC Davis Botanical Conservatory will be open late again today (June 18), to accommodate people wishing to see and smell Tammy the Titan in bloom. The bloom began at 1 p.m. Sunday (June 17), according to Ernesto Sandoval, conservatory director. He estimated a visitor count of 400 to 500 people through midnight. The conservatory will be open until 8 o'clock tonight. Admission is free, but donations are welcome.

By Dateline staff

There’s a big stink coming to the Botanical Conservatory: a titan arum (Amorphophallus titanum), or giant corpse flower, is about to bloom.

The bloom will be the first for the plant named Tammy the Titan and the conservatory’s eighth titan arum bloom since Ted the Titan smelled up the place in 2003. Blooms like these make news for a couple of reasons: the odor, of course; the size of the plants; and because the blooms happen rarely in cultivated plants.

Ernesto Sandoval, conservatory director, had been expecting Tammy's bloom as early as Thursday — but it had not happened yet. He rated the chance of the bloom happening today (June 15) at 80 percent to 85 percent, and, if not, today, perhaps some time this weekend. Follow the UC Davis titan arums on Facebook.

Titan arum blooms, which last for only about 36 hours, give off a pungent aroma akin to rotting meat — as a way to attract pollinators.

Titan arums come from the island of Sumatra in Indonesia. The plant spends most of its life as an underground stem called a corm. Once a year, the plant puts out a single, big green leaf that lasts about six months. Some years, a spike emerges — in Tammy's case, about 45 inches tall, which is on the small side.

The bloom occurs when the spike, or spadix, produces several hundred tiny flowers, male and female, at the narrow base of the spadix where it joins a funnel-shaped leaf called a spathe.

The conservatory is on Kleiber Hall Drive, which cuts off Hutchison Drive just east of the parking garage. Click here for a map, directions and parking suggestions.

More about the conservatory and titan arums.