It's been over a fortnight since Lois, the corpse flower, started her journey to Houston über celebrity status — and we're still waiting. After last week's rush to the Houston Museum of Natural Science, the Cockrell Butterfly Center has gone from being open for 24 hours a day to closing at midnight and reopening at 9 a.m.

The low-performing plant has attracted 33,370 visitors to the museum in the past 13 days.

But the wait could be going on for a while — if the lessons of corpse flowers past are any indication.

HMNS horticulturist Zac Stayton has enlisted corpse flower experts nationwide, such as the Stephen F. Austin State University professor who was the first scientist to observe a corpse flower bloom in Texas. There are close to 40 such flowers kept at University of California, Berkeley, where horticulturists also encountered complications when the flower was moved into a cooler environment, much like Lois.

One particularly stubborn flower at Berkeley was three and a half weeks overdue when its bloom finally came to complete fruition. HMNS first tweeted that Lois was in the "very, very early stages" of blooming last Tuesday.

Stayton attests to the plant's good health, but admits, "With anything in the wild, there is always a slim chance that it will abort."

As CultureMap reported earlier today, the danger of nighttime temperatures dipping below 80 degrees may deter the flower from blooming soon. The addition of humidifiers, heaters and a plastic sheath over the atrium's entryway over the weekend has brought Lois' stamen to a record width of 40-inches around.

"Today's going good, actually," Stayton said this afternoon. "We're happy with just the slightest changes, and she has gotten so much fatter. We've found that the increased heat has really helped."

"They're all a little bit different," Stayton explained, regarding the range of blooming times for corpse flowers. "It still could be any minute now." Stayton says that no more banana hormone treatments will be used, as they might damage the flower's course.

Although the museum was unusually crowded for a Monday afternoon, the buzz had died down in comparison to the previous week. Regina Bartlett and her daughter Kelly travelled an hour and a half from Magnolia to visit the corpse flower.

"I'm disappointed because I didn't get to see it bloomed out," lamented Regina, but her daughter added, "Still, this is a great museum. I came here when I was in fifth grade, and I always wanted to come back." Concluded the mother, "The flower just added interest."

The Bartletts don't intend to make a return visit to the museum once Lois blooms.

A feeling of listlessness now permeates the Cockrell's interior as both staff and patrons weary of the delayed bloom.

"She's been so unpredictable up to this point that we've stopped trying to forecast when she might bloom," Stayton admitted. "We're just trying to make her happy."