Cottage, Cuddington, Buckinghamshire, England.

Rafflesia arnoldii and Rafflesia arnoldii: close up by Tamara van Molken
“Everyone sees plants as passive and benign. But, actually, plants are hugely manipulative. Plants have to do everything animals do. They have to cope with predators; they have to find food; they have to find a mate. They have to do all of that sitting still.

One of the largest flowers in the world, Rafflesia, tricks its pollinator by pretending to be a slab of rotting meat.
So this flower is large, sort of red, with sort of lumps and bumps on
it that look like rotting pustules. It also releases the most awful
stench, like a rotting corpse, and heats itself up to the same
temperature as a corpse. Flies are tricked, very successfully, by this flower’s impersonation, so they lay their eggs on the flower and get covered in pollen as they do.

— from “The Secret Language of Flowers,” a talk by molecular biologist Dr. Heather Whitney at TEDxSalford.

Drosera burmannii.

Drosera Venusta has stalked glands that secrete sweet mucilage to attract and
ensnare insects and enzymes to digest them, and sessile glands that absorb the resulting nutrient soup. Insects and small prey are attracted by the sweet
secretions of the peduncular glands. Upon touching these, the prey
become entrapped by sticky mucilage which prevents their progress or
escape. Eventually, the prey either succumb to death through exhaustion
or through asphyxiation as the mucilage envelops them and clogs their spiracles.

Såsuen

Parasitic plants in moss near Kanneliarvi, 40 miles north-west from Saint Petersburg, Russia, July 29, 2005.

Fibers from the fique plant, dyed with natural
pigments by artist Susana Mejia, are part of the Waterweavers exhibit.
In the photo above, the fibers hang to dry in the Amazon jungle. (Jorge Montoya – NPR)

Another image of a green burial – or natural burial. (A
burial alternative that allows the body to be returned to the earth and
naturally recycled into new life without the use of toxic embalming
fluids, metal caskets and concrete vaults).

If you’ve ever wondered what would happen
if you crossed a slug with a leaf, friends, we have your answer right
here. This strange creature that appears to be part leaf, part slug and
part tongue is a Leaf-vein slug (Athoracophorus bitentaculatus),
a species of land slug native to New Zealand. They’re nocturnal and
thought to feed primarily on algae and fungi found on the surface of
plants, which means they don’t damage plants like plenty of other slug
species do.

This particular specimen was photographed by Redditor Aaronlolwtf while they were out trimming some flax last year. To view more examples of this fascinating little creature, click here. (via Reddit)

New Metal-Eating Shrub Species Could Clean Up Toxic Waste Sites Around the World

A newly described shrub species called Rinorea niccolifera is capable of consuming between 100 to
1000 times the amount of nickel that normal plants can. A team from the
University of the Philippines-Los Baños that described the species in a
new report also found that its ability to ‘eat’ toxic levels of metal could make the shrub a potential antidote to toxic waste sites around the globe.

The plant has evolved to draw up nutrients and water from the soil like normal
plants, but is also able to absorb poisonous nutrients that would kill
most. Known as hyperaccumulators, these plants are able to eat poisonous metals,