Welcome to Quantum Magazine's podcast.

Each episode, we bring you stories about developments in science and mathematics.

I'm Susan Vallett.

If you've ever seen or smelled a corpse flower bloom, lucky you?

It turns out there's a lot going on within those mysterious plants that

smell like rotting human flesh, and it shows just how far parasites will go when it comes to

hijacking DNA. That's next. Explore other science mysteries. Next.

Explore other science mysteries in the Quanta book Alice and Bob Meet the Wall of Fire,

published by the MIT Press.

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They're invisible at first.

In their Southeast Asian forest homes, they grow as thin strands of cells.

They're sometimes more than 10 meters or 32 feet long, weaving through the vital tissues of their vine hosts.

They siphon nourishment from those hosts. and even under a microscope, the single-file

lines of cells are nearly indistinguishable from the vine's own. They seem more like a fungus than a

plant. But when the drive-de-bred awakens them, the members of the Refleziaceae family bloom as immense, stemless, rubbery-red corpse

flowers covered in polka-dots.

The flower feels like a wet Nerf football.

They smell like rotting meat, which is designed to draw pollinating flies.

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