What stinks like a dead animal, sucks the water, nutrients and minerals out of plants, is about 3 feet wide and weighs nearly 16 pounds? The answer is not a fetid, parasitic extraterrestrial, but a group of plants in Southeast Asia known as Rafflesia.
And for the first time, after nearly two centuries of debate and research, scientists have figured out just where these plants belong in the broad “tree” of life.
The research, conducted by botanists and geneticists at Harvard University, the University of Wisconsin, Southern Illinois University and the Smithsonian Institution, was published in Jan. 12 issue of the journal Science.