A rare flower is in a superbloom in the Rocky Mountains
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RASCOE: Why do they take so long to bloom? Like, what are they doing all that time?

INOUYE: They're stirring up energy in a root underground. And then in the last year of their life, they use all that energy to put this big flower stalk up. On average, the plants are, oh, about 5 feet tall, although I have seen them as tall as 9 feet tall. If you think about it, a plant that only has one chance in its life to flower and it wants to attract pollinators, wants to make itself conspicuous. And so one way it does that is to make sure that it sticks up higher than the surrounding vegetation.

RASCOE: Since they take so long to grow, how do you know when they're going to bloom?

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