Titan arum, the world's largest and smelliest flower on Thursday attracted crowds at Sydney's Royal Botanic gardens. Its biological name, Amorphophallus titanum, means very large, deformed, penis.

The flower, which can grow up to three meters in height, has a pale yellow wrinkled center and smells like rotten fish. A crowd of people, however, have lined up at the Royal Gardens on Thursday to get a scent of the flower during an exhibition.

Reuters quotes Dr Tim Entwisle, a spokesman at the garden, as saying, "We've only had this on display once before - the first time we'd ever had it two years ago, the only complaints I got was that it didn't smell bad enough."

He adds that, "It's a strange thing, particularly little kids love it and you can put it head close to it and it really does smell a bit off. That's what it does out in Indonesia where it grows, so it can attract these flies in to pollinate it."

The flower originated in Vietnam.