Even plants can get into the spirit of Halloween.
Kyle Martin sees it all the time. He’s a doctoral candidate in plant biology at Cornell University whose specialty is brood-site deception. That’s when a plant masks itself, sending misleading signals to fool a pollinator.
In other words, when you can’t say it with flowers, say it with stench.
“The flowers I study usually smell like rotting substrates, like fruit or carrion, to attract insects,” he says.
It’s a horticultural twist on trick or treat.
Read the whole article., which profiles plants that are scary looking (titan arum), dangerous (giant hogweed), creepy (bat flower), or just plain Ewwwwy (bleeding tooth fungus). Karl Niklas, Liberty Hyde Bailey Professor of Botany in the Plant Biology Section, also explains the life history of some of these scary plants.