The plant usually called the corpse flower was described in 1878 by the Italian botanist Odoardo Beccari, from Sumatra, and its scientific name is Amorphophallus titanum, which is Greek and Latin for more or less what you suspect: a giant misshapen phallus. The story goes that when David Attenborough was filming The Private Life of Plants in the 1990s, saying that on television again and again seemed a bit much, so he called it the titan arum instead. That is the name botanic gardens now print on the sign. I like that a name made to get one series past the audience at home outlived the reason for it. A plant that blooms rarely, smells of rotting meat, and draws crowds who queue up specifically to be disgusted owes its most respectable name to somebody minding his manners.