HANOVER – A rare “corpse flower” is about to bloom at Dartmouth College.

The titan arum named Morphy is 13 years old and hasn’t bloomed since 2011. Officials at Dartmouth’s Life Sciences Greenhouse estimate it will bloom sometime this week.

The flower, which measured 5 feet in size, could grow several more feet in height before it opens. When it does, it will send out a pungent odour that has been compared to the smell of a decaying animal.

Kim DeLong is curator and manager of Dartmouth’s Life Sciences greenhouse said the smell is “awful.”

“It’s been compared to feces, cadavers, urine… anything putrid, anything decaying, dead, dying.”

The smell can be pretty overwhelming, she said. “You tell your brain that it’s OK, there’s nothing dead around, but the limbic part of your brain wants to say, ‘Oh, ick, something’s wrong.'”