You don't often find crowds of people flocking together to take in the pungent scent of rotting flesh, but that's exactly what happens every time a corpse flower blooms at a public garden.

Inside the hot, humid greenhouse at Summit Sprouts, Sarah Dormer leaned in close to the blooming amorphophallus konjac, took a deep breath and recoiled, gagging.

It’s sometimes called a lily, but it’s an arum ... plants use the same tactic to get insects to pay attention. The corpse flower is native to the dense rainforests of Sumatra in Indonesia.