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This class of “carrion flowers” includes many species, but few are as charismatic as Rafflesia arnoldii, also known as the “stinking corpse lily,” which also holds the record as the world’s largest flower.

Enduring a grueling seven-hour hike in Kalinga, India, a group of researchers came upon 30 Rafflesia banaoana plants blooming near a river.

“To spend time with a rare Rafflesia flower,” Thorogood said, “is the closest thing to magic.”

He encountered the massive Rafflesia flower, which featured nearly two-foot-wide scarlet petals and smelled like a rotting corpse, and a phosphorescent fungus that emitted enough light at night to allow him to read a newspaper.

Perhaps, she adds, Rafflesia’s opening gambit is to suppress this secretion and besiege its host.