Normally, tourists would be turned off by the smell of death rather than drawn to it.
However, thousands gathered this week in Sydney, a city renowned for its beaches and thriving culinary scene, to get a look and smell of a rare flower whose aroma has been affectionately likened to rotting flesh.
At the Australian city’s Royal Botanic Garden, crowds of tourists flocked to see the rare and endangered “corpse flower,” or Amorphophallus titanum, blossom. The flower only blooms for a day every few years.