In a rare event, the U.S. Botanic Garden had three corpse flowers in bloom this year, following a single one last year.

The rarest one had a purple stem, and was the first to bloom

The other two had the more common green stems. Here they are before blooming:

And here’s the third one in bloom (I unfortunately missed the bloom of the second one):

The first two in bloom, as usual, fold after 24-48 hours of bloom, but are still fascinating: