Dish-Houston

It's an extremely big, very rare and remarkably smelly flower and it's is poised to bloom in Houston this week.

It's a corpse flower, and it rarely blooms, even in the wild. Only 100 of the endangered plants have ever bloomed in cultivation, the first being in 1889. Only 28 have bloomed in the U.S.

The 29th will spring open any day now at the Houston Museum of Natural Science, reports the Houston Chronicle.

The corpse flower — so named for its "delicious" scent — can grow to 10-feet tall and five-feet wide, making it the largest flower in the world.

When it opens up, it emits a smell like rotting flesh to attract carrion-eating beetles and flesh flies, which pollinate it. It looks like a big green pod, with a giant pinkish endive inside, surrounded by purple.

The Latin name is Amorphophallus titanum but it's nicknamed Lois — after a former staff member's mother — and weighs 30 lbs.