By Sheetal Kumari | July 2, 2025
This ghostly, petal-less orchid flowers infrequently. In Florida’s swamps, it is dependent on a lone moth for pollination, puzzling scientists for decades.
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Dubbed the “corpse flower,” this plant produces a pungent smell and flowers every several years, confounding scientists with its volatile flowering pattern.
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This prehistoric desert plant only ever produces two colossal leaves, which it does for more than 1,000 years. Its bizarre lifespan and growth habits contravene standard plant biology.
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With otherworldly turquoise blooms, the Jade Vine’s colour and bat-specialised pollination render it all but impossible to grow outside of its Philippine rainforest native habitat.
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Absent chlorophyll, this white plant lives by parasitizing fungi rather than photosynthesis, undermining our simple assumptions about how plants live.
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Creating the world’s largest flower, Rafflesia has a scent of rotting flesh. A reclusive parasite for the remainder of the year, it flowers at random for only several days.
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With its record-breaking giant floating leaves and night-opening blooms, this Amazon water lily’s phenomenal size and muscular power continue to surprise scientists today.
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With its record-breaking giant floating leaves and night-opening blooms, this Amazon water lily’s phenomenal size and muscular power continue to surprise scientists today.
(Image: Canva)
This strange-looking black flower, which resembles a bat with long whiskers, intrigues scientists with its strange shape and cryptic pollination methods.
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The leaves of Mimosa pudica fold themselves immediately upon contact. Researchers are still learning about the intricate electrical impulses that cause its unexpected rapid response.
(Image: Canva)