Sydney’s botanic gardens haven’t had a bloom of the corpse flower, which only lasts about 24 hours, in 15 years.

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.

An endangered tropical plant that emits the stench of a rotting corpse during its rare blooms has begun to flower in a greenhouse in Sydney, Australia

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."