Some people grow flowers for the pleasant scents and the long-lasting beauty they provide.

Lawrence Schweitzer, an orthopedic surgeon from town, has been growing a very unusual flower for anything but its pleasant scent — as well as for its short-term and unusual look.

Dr Schweitzer has been caring for a plant called a titan arum, also known as a corpse flower, waiting for it to bloom for 18 years.

Yes, 18 years.

And you were impatient with those impatiens.

Of course, good things come to those who wait. He has run a medical practice, and along with his wife, Beth, raised two children (Eric and Jenny) while caring for the plant and waiting for it to flower.

As of this past week, Dr Schweitzer was still waiting for it to bloom but had noticed the plant’s bud — about equivalent in size with the height of an adult — becoming progressively closer to opening, and he e-mailed the news to The Newtown Bee on August 13.

The plant’s nonscientific name, corpse flower, stems — pun intended — from its horrible smell.

That’s right; this flower grows to stink. It attracts insects, including carrion flies, which, Dr Schweitzer notes, are the same ones you see on decomposing road kill. The flower itself will be a dark red or purple color, meant to resemble the color of muscle tissue to help lure its pollinators, he added.

That’s pretty gross stuff, but it is the perfect plant for a doctor accustomed to seeing the gruesome-to-most insides of people’s limbs during surgery.

So what is the attraction to this offensive-smelling flower to humans?

Its rarity — there may only be as many as a handful of these plants in bloom across the country in a given year, Dr Schweitzer noted — and its size. The corpse flower is one of the largest flowers [known as an inflorescence], he said. The flower, which has a single funnel-like petal, will be about three feet across, Dr Schweitzer anticipates.

“You can imagine how much energy it takes for a plant to produce a flower this big,” said Dr Schweitzer, explaining why it takes many years, if not decades, for these plants to bloom.

“If that weren’t enough, the smell (when it finally opens) is attractive, enticing, and irresistible, but only to carrion flies and dung beetles, which are attracted to dead things — so it emits an aroma often described as room-clearing. That’s what you have to do to attract just the right pollinator. If you come from Sumatra as this fellow does, you’ll do just about anything to make fruit and seeds,” Dr Schweitzer wrote in an e-mail to The Newtown Bee.

The plant’s single leaf grows from its underground corm and dies back approximately every year or two until it has saved up enough energy to flower, he said. It could be five, ten, or who knows how many years until it flowers again. And the show lasts only for about 24 to 48 hours, then the flower dies, Dr Schweitzer said.

A long-time grower of orchids — four decades to be more specific — some of which have taken many years to bloom, Dr Schweitzer maintains a huge greenhouse and is experienced with having seemingly unheard of patience for plants. He has won national awards for his orchids, including five last year alone. He clearly has a green thumb.

Dr Schweitzer, while attending an orchid club meeting on Long Island nearly two decades ago, bumped into a fellow gardener who was selling — at the time — tulip-sized bulbs for the unusual plant, which is native to western Sumatra. Dr Schweitzer purchased one of these corpse flower bulbs for $50, and now he’s got a plant with a medicine ball-sized corm that weighs about 40 pounds.

The bud, which he said grows a couple of inches each day, was about five and a half feet tall as of the middle of this past week.

Had the plant finally been ready to bloom in the winter, Dr Schweitzer would have had to keep it in his greenhouse, but the hot, humid summer we have had has allowed him to bring the plant outside.

The New York Botanical Garden’s specimen flowered in 2016, only the third or fourth flowering in the past 100 years, said Dr Schweitzer, adding that customers paid to line up and see the comet-like rarity.

Dr Schweitzer said he will not be charging family and friends for a perhaps regrettable whiff or up-close look at a flower he claimed you will be able to see from 100 feet away, but he was expecting to have a large contingent of viewers when the magic, nose-pinching moment arrives.

For anybody interested in growing this huge plant with hopes of it yielding its stinky flower, Dr Schweitzer offers some advice: “You have to not make any bad mistakes, like watering it too much and having it rot out,” he said. “With the right environment, pretty much anybody can do it.”

If they are up for the smelly, room-clearing challenge, that is.