According to reports, as a specimen of the stinking Amorphophallus titanium didn’t bloom at the Chicago Botanic Garden, researchers had to open it on Sunday. The plant is also known as the titan arum.

As per reports, staff had been nurturing and waiting for 12 years for the flower to bloom. It has been dubbed as spike. Over the last month, approximately 50,000 people have come to the garden located in Glencoe, Ill., to see the roughly 6-foot-tall plant.

According to Tim Pollak, the garden’s outdoor floriculturist, “The titan arum, also known as the corpse flower, is the largest flowering structure in the world. When it blooms, it puts on a show like no other”.

The corpse flower has been named for the awful smell it emits when it blooms. The flower opens only once every decade or so. According to information page of the garden, when it blooms, the flower emits its rotten scent in order to attract the carrion beetles and flesh flies, which are its natural pollinators.

According to LiveScience, the smell is the kind of awful odor that if it is there in one’s kitchen, one might think that there's a dreadful creature at the back of the fridge.

This plant is also very rare, its status has been placed only a step over endangered, according to USA Today. At present, there are roughly 100 cultivated corpse flowers, and as per the Chicago Tribune, only nearly one flower matures for every 100 acres in its natural habitat.