Kitty litter. Sweat. An aquarium.
That’s how three visitors described the aroma of Morticia, the Franklin Park Zoo’s most famous flower, after waiting in line half an hour for a whiff.
Morticia reached full bloom Tuesday night, an event that lasts less than two days and occurs once every 15 years for Amorphophallus titanum, commonly called a “corpse flower.”
Zoo officials opened Morticia’s greenhouse last Thursday for viewing, and since last Friday roughly 11,900 visitors have stopped by, spokeswoman Brooke Wardrop said. That’s 3,000 more than the zoo’s total visitors during the same period last year, she said.
During a free viewing Wednesday morning, hundreds lined up in intense heat to see, and smell, the blooming flower for themselves.
The corpse flower takes its name from its aroma, which many compare to that of rotting flesh.
Many who visited Wednesday had their own descriptions.
“To me, it smells more or less like old kitty litter,” said Ben Dicke, 28, of Somerville. “It’s not too pleasant.”
Zoo officials say about 30 corpse flowers have bloomed in captivity. In order to survive, the 200-pound flower needs conditions similar to those in its native western Indonesia, with a temperature of 82 degrees and a humidity level between 80 and 90 percent.
Those greenhouse conditions, on a day when temperatures in Boston topped 90 degrees, made distinguishing the plant’s smell a bit challenging for Josh Evans, 15, of Needham.
“I’m trying to decide whether that’s the plant or whether that’s a bunch of sweaty people,” he said. “I feel like you should be able to smell the plant. That must be it.”
Not that the smell, which he called “really, really bad,” detracted from his visit.
“These things only flower once every 15 years,” Evans said. “It’s not a chance you get every day.”
Morticia stands 4 feet, 9 inches tall. Its large sheaths curl away from a tall brown spike in all directions and are deep purple when viewed from above.
Damaging the flower in any way, whether a scratch or bruise, can prove to be disastrous for the plant, said Harry Liggett, manager of horticulture and grounds at Zoo New England.
The zoo has four other corpse flowers, all donated by Dr. Louis Ricciardiello, an oral surgeon in Laconia, N.H.
Ricciardiello, who has been working with the plants for several years, holds the Guinness World Record for the world’s tallest bloom. The winning plant, a corpse flower, measured more than 10 feet, 2 inches, in 2010.
Zoo officials expected Morticia’s full bloom to end either Wednesday night or Thursday morning. The greenhouse will close to the public starting Thursday.
Jodie Dow, 66, returned Wednesday after two visits.
“I may never get to see one of these again, so I wanted to see it,” said Dow, of Somerville.
Gabe Harris, 12, of West Roxbury said he felt “kind of relieved” that Morticia’s odor had not lived up to his expectations.
“It didn’t smell as bad as I thought it would,” Harris said. “Trash smells worse.”
Along with his mother, Harris brought along his friend Connor Lewis, from Hyde Park.
“I knew he would be glad to come see it, because it was called a ‘corpse flower,’ ” Harris said.
“I just want to smell a dead corpse,” said Lewis.
But asked to describe how the flower actually smelled, Lewis offered a surprising answer: “The Aquarium, sort of.”