Orange Coast College in Costa Mesa, California has a blooming corpse flower also. As the college awaits the distinct-scented bloom in their own horticulture department, MSU's staff is trying to arrange a pollen exchange for the flowers.

In the meantime, staff is patiently awaiting the bloom of the corpse flower, which is scheduled to permeate the air with a rotting flesh scent soon.

"Since they don’t flower regularly, they have, in the evolutionary sense, settled on recruiting the types of insects who are attracted to decaying meat," W.J. Beal Botanical Garden Peter Carrington Assistant Curator said.

The flower grows to be anywhere from six to nine feet in height, with a base width of up to four feet . 

The corpse flower also blooms rarely. The last time it bloomed at MSU was in 2010 . It will bloom in the next week, making it possible for students at MSU to have a chance to see the corpse flower in bloom during their time on campus. 

Carrington said it is impressive for the corpse flower to bloom twice in only four years, especially since they don't always bloom easily in their native habitat of Indonesia .

"It is literally one of the wonders of nature, to see this thing," Carrington said. "There’s only a handful of these plants that flower outside the natural habitat a decade."

The flower will stay in bloom for 24 to 48 hours some time in the next week. In bloom, the corpse flower releases a putrid scent meant to attract flies or beetles in order to pollinate.

Size and scent make this flower a rare opportunity in MSU's botanical attractions. The blooming corpse flower is located in MSU’s Plant Biology Conservatory on Wilson Road .

"Something this huge garners attention even in the jungles of Sumatra ," Carrington said. 

Pinpointing when the plant will bloom can be as difficult as predicting the weather, curator of W.J. Beal Botanical Garden Frank Telewski said. Many factors are taken into account, and the corpse flower's bloom could be early next week depending on how warm the weekend weather is.

"Warmth accelerates it," Telewski said. "When it stores up enough energy in the bulb in the ground, it will flower."

Visitors to the conservatory can see the flower starting this weekend from 1 p.m. to 4 p.m. and weekdays 10 a.m. to 2 p.m . 

To garner a better observation of the flower and to bring it to more eyes, a live video feed will be equipped in the conservatory and made available to the public online . 

But Telewski said part of his job is connecting people to plants and developing a sense of value and place within them.

"It captures one’s imagination," Telewski said. "A lot of these plants are available to introduce people to the diversity of plants from around the world."

He said he hopes the flower will remind people that botanical life is a large part of human life — from the air we intake to the food we eat.

"But most important, plants are just important," Telewski said.