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.

Most of the time, people don’t make a pilgrimage to see (and smell) something that smells like rotting meat. But this case is different.

A rare plant known as the corpse flower bloomed in Sydney on Friday for the first time in more than a decade, emitting an odour likened to rotting flesh and delighting thousands who queued for a whiff.

This is the first time the corpse flower has bloomed at Brooklyn Botanic Garden since its arrival from Malaysia in 2018.

Dubbed Putricia, the titan arum plant emits a putrid smell likened to "something rotting" or "hot garbage" for 24 hours after blooming. The smell is the result of a chemical production that happens in the plant to attract pollinators.

The bloom has attracted up to 20,000 admirers who filed past, hoping to experience the smell for themselves, with some attendees describing it as "like death," "like poop," and "like sewage water."