The air was thick with both anticipation and a pungent smell as visitors flocked to the Brooklyn Botanic Garden last weekend for a chance to see a rare flower bloom. The Amorphophallus gigas—a cousin to Amorphophallus titanum,

Sydney's corpse flower attracts thousands of people with its rare blossom and its stench of rotting flesh, offering a fascinating lesson.

The flower has been said to smell like rotting flesh, wet socks or hot cat food, and only stinks for 24 hours after blooming.

Across the globe in Australia, a Amorphophallus titanum corpse flower nicknamed Putricia has been blooming for the past week at the Royal Sydney Botanic Garden. This is the first time in 15 years that one of these flowers has bloomed in Sydney and over 20,000 people have stopped in to take a whiff.

One by one, visitors to the Brooklyn Botanic Garden pulled out their phones snap pictures of the rare blooming plant before leaning in to brave a whiff of its infamously putrid scent, which resembles that of rotting flesh.

The flower's Latin name translates as "giant, misshapen penis." But it's better known to locals as "Putricia." Royal Botanical Garden Sydney has even set up a livestream in anticipation.

Known for its smell of putrid, rotting flesh, a Corpse Flower has bloomed for the first time in 15 years at the Royal Botanic Garden in Sydney on Thursday (January 23). The botanical gardens chief scientist Brett Summerell explains the reason for the smell and visitors share their impressions of the flower.

Visitors gathered in Sydney to witness the blooming of a rare flower known as the "corpse flower," which opens for just 24 hours once every few years.

New Yorkers lined up for hours outside the Brooklyn Botanic Garden to catch a glimpse -- and a whiff -- of the facility's rare blooming corpse flower.