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(Full article title: Pretty as a flower! Michelle Obama steps out in a floral dress for an upscale vegan lunch with her Secret Service detail in Los Angeles) Michelle Obama was spotted out and about in Los Angeles again this week, just days after a candid talk and reading from her upcoming memoir in New Orleans. The former first lady was seen slipping out of the side door of Crossroads Kitchen, an upscale vegan restaurant on West Hollywood's famous Melrose Avenue. Michelle walked in between two Secret Service agents before slipping into a black car. She sported a black dress...

WASHINGTON — The long wait is finally over for visitors who have been yearning for a whiff of a giant flower that smells oddly like rotting flesh.

BOSTON, - Boston's Franklin Park Zoo said its corpse flower, named for the odor its flower gives off, bloomed overnight to welcome the first day of summer. The amorphophallus titanium plant, nicknamed Morticia, measures 4 feet, 9 inches tall and has begun its 48-hour bloom, which takes place only once every 15 years, The Boston Globe reported Wednesday. Zoo officials said the plant is one of only about 30 to bloom in captivity and needs to be kept in conditions mimicking those of its native western Indonesia, including a temperature of 82 degrees and a humidity level of 80 percent...

The corpse flower appears to be finally coming out of her shell. Lois, the giant smelly flower, is starting to give off some nasty odors and bulging toward a bloom, flower-watchers at the Houston Museum of Natural Science, both official and not official, are twittering at this hour. We're keeping our sights on the Hermann Park oddity...

SAN MARINO, Calif.- The corpse flower was in bloom during the weekend at California's Huntington Library and fans of its nasty odor were not disappointed, library officials said. The flower gives off an odor of rotting flesh that lets rainforest insects know it is ready for pollination. Celebrating the corpse flower in full bloom is an annual event at the Huntington Library in San Marino, which features a collection of rare books and manuscripts, several art collections and botanical gardens spread out over 120 acres northeast of Los Angeles. The corpse flower bloomed Friday evening and the bloom was expected...

MILWAUKEE , Jan. 8 (UPI) -- A rare, large and foul-smelling plant in the lily family that blooms about every six years may stink up the Milwaukee Public Museum Jan. 18, authorities say. The corpse flower -- a tital arum (large lily), or Amorphophallus titanium (huge unshaped penis) -- normally grows wild in Indonesian rainforests. The schedule by which they flower is unpredictable, and once they do so, it is only for 24 to 48 hours, says a notice on the Web site of San Francisco State University. In 2008 when the museum's other corpse flower bloomed, it gave off...

MILWAUKEE -- Officials at the Milwaukee Public Museum expect the so-called "corpse flower" to bloom very soon. The museum's curator of botany, Neil Luebke (LIHB'-kee), says chances are good the titan arum will bloom Monday afternoon, close early Tuesday, open again that afternoon and then close for good sometime Wednesday. The flower is known for its odor of rotting flesh. It comes in waves and attracts carrion beetles and sweat bees in its native rain forests of the Indonesian island of Sumatra. [snip] The museum obtained the plant in 2002 from a seed produced by University of Wisconsin-Madison's flower. It...

BLACKSBURG, Va. (AP) - Hundreds of visitors filed through a Virginia Tech greenhouse to get a glimpse, and a whiff, of a powerfully malodorous "corpse flower" as it bloomed. The large Indonesian plant, whose botanical name is Amorphophallus titanum, began opening up about 6 p.m. Friday and was in full bloom by early Saturday morning, curator Debbie Wiley-Vawter said in a telephone interview Monday. The plant emits a stench to attract decaying flesh-eating beetles, flies and sweat bees for pollination. Once it blooms, the odor lingers for about eight hours, then it takes several more years before the plant has...

BERLIN (AFP) - Thousands of Germans have flocked to a botanical garden to witness the freak appearance of three flowers on a giant member of the lily family, notorious for its revolting smell. Since mid-April an Arum Titan in a garden in Bonn in western Germany has been displaying three monster buds, a phenomenon described by the management as unique. The plant is known to botanists as Amorphophallus titanum but more familiarly as the corpse-flower because of its repulsive odour. "Our example is the only one in the world to put out several flowers simultaneously," the garden exulted on its...

Giant "corpse flower" raises a stink in Sydney SYDNEY (AFP) - Hundreds of people queued up in Australia's largest city to get a glimpse and a whiff of a blooming "corpse flower", the world's largest and arguably smelliest flower. The Titan Arum's smell is described as something like rotting flesh or fish gone bad, hence its nickname. Its blooms, which can have a diameter of as much as four feet (1.33 metres), release a pungent stench to attract insects. It has been drawing huge crowds to Sydney's Royal Botanic Gardens since it reached full bloom overnight. It is only the...