We tend to think of flowers as beautiful things with a lovely scent, but not all flowers comply to these standards. Take, for example, the Hydnora africana, which smells like dung. While the corpse lily might be the most famous of smelly, ugly flowers, the parasitic Hydnora deserves the trophy for most unpleasant. But there's a very good reason for this flower's stench—it's fertilized by dung beetles and, as you may have guessed, no smell attracts these insects more than feces. While the plant looks... READ ON

Lab image via ShutterstockTrauma, that’s what. It’s the smell of chemical defenses and first aid. The fresh, “green” scent of a just-mowed lawn is the lawn trying to save itself from the injury you just... READ ON

Can a plant be warm blooded? Well, being as how they have no blood, the obvious answer is no. But the skunk cabbage comes as close as it can by producing enough heat to stay 65-95 degrees above the ambient temperature of the freezing winters of its New England home. To produce heat, it metabolizes oxygen—the same amount of oxygen used by an animal its size. As a result, it's able to melt the snow around it and attract the handful of pollinating insects that are active in this weather—cold-tolerant... READ ON

Encephalartos woodii is the plant equivalent of Lonesome George, the world's last remaining giant Galapagos tortoise. Also known as Wood's cycad, the only one we know of is a lonely male tree in London. Because this type of tree only has pollen or seeds in any given individual, it requires a pair of trees to make a fertile seed. After surviving through the dinosaur age and making it all the way to modern times, the plant might finally meet its end. Scientists are desperately searching for another... READ ON