Fatal attraction: rare corpse flower draws hundreds of onlookers

A San Francisco Bay Area nursery owner showcased the giant blooming flower to neighbors at an abandoned gas station

More than 1,000 people have flocked to an abandoned gas station in the San Francisco Bay Area to get a whiff of a corpse flower, named for the stench it emits when it blooms, which has been compared to rotting flesh.

Solomon Leyva, a nursery owner in Alameda who deals in exceptionally rare plants, had been posting on social media about his amorphophallus titanum. When he saw a lot of interest in the giant blooming flower, he decided to share the rare plant with his neighbors.