Don’t we see these stories about how “rare” these flowers are to bloom in “captivity” every freakin’ year for the last 20 years? Journalists really suck.
So, it’s not actually “rare”, it’s just what they normally do.
From Wikipedia:
“In cultivation, the titan arum generally requires 7–10 years of vegetative growth before blooming for the first time. After its initial blooming, there can be considerable variation in blooming frequency. Some plants may not bloom again for another 7–10 years while others may bloom every two to three years.[11] There have also been documented cases of back-to-back blooms occurring within a year [12] and corms simultaneously sending up both a leaf (or two) and an inflorescence.[13] There has also been an occasion when a corm produced multiple simultaneous blooms.[14]”
Each flower only blooms once every few years, and the flowers themselves are quite uncommon. And there has not been a flower per year blooming.
One of these flowers bloomed at UC Davis while I was a student there. I went to visit it, but unfortunately, it was only giving off a very weak odor. The bloom lasts only a couple of days, and it only emits the odor for a few hours during that time. They are very interesting and unusual plants.