A corpse flower smells like a heady mix of rotten fish, sewage, and dead bodies. It’s a stench meant to draw flies, but just as surely, it draws tourists. Braving a blustery Chicago night, thousands of people lined up Tuesday for a whiff of a corpse flower named Alice at the Chicago Botanic Garden.

In fact, the demand to see and smell a corpse flower is so great that botanical gardens now vie to own one. Gardeners lavish them with care, hoping to force more stinky blooms from a plant whose scent is so rare (up to a decade between flowerings) and so fleeting (eight to 12 hours) that visitors are often disappointed to miss peak stench.

But why do