People who like bad smells were in luck this week. They could smell the corpse flower – the world's smelliest plant. It gets its name from a corpse – a dead body. Thousands of visitors went to smell it in a botanic garden in Australia. Some people held their nose when they were near the flower. Others coughed and held their breath because of the bad smell. Some visitors said the smell was like a dead mouse or rotting garbage.

The corpse flower is very rare. It is an endangered species. There are only a few hundred of the plants left in the wild. A lot of the forest where the plant grows has been cut down. The flower is one of the biggest in the world. It grows to three metres high and lives over 40 years. However, it flowers once a decade and opens only for a day or two. The smell of the corpse flower attracts beetles and flies. They pollinate the flower so it can grow again.