Geelong Botanic Gardens staff expect a corpse flower called Pete to attract big crowds when it flowers in the next few days.
The plant is native to Indonesia and typically flowers for one to two days every seven to 10 years.
After blooming and creating a bad smell, the flower will collapse, and the plant will retreat underground for up to 10 years
At 1.5 metres tall, 'Pete' the corpse flower lives behind glass in a climate-controlled Geelong Botanic Gardens greenhouse and is just about ready to bloom.
And if the gardens' last corpse plant flowering in 2024 was anything to go by, hundreds of people could come to see and smell him.
"It's really quite a beautiful flower, and it has a horrific smell when it does bloom," Lucy Griffiths from the Geelong Botanic Gardens said.
A blooming corpse flower has been described as smelling like a dead possum, rotting cheese or fermenting cabbage.
The Amorphophallus titanum, Titan Arum, or corpse flower, stores most of its energy underground in a corm: a short, swollen, vertical plant stem full of starches and nutrients.
Weighing the root of the plant earlier this year, Ms Griffiths said she was confident it would flower soon.
"When we weighed Pete in 2024, the corm was just under 10 kilos," she said.
