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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.

Molina keeps a potted Tetrastigma in her university office, regularly sprinkling the plant with Rafflesia seeds in the hope they will miraculously catch.

Little is known about how the parasitic Rafflesia—a genus that produces the world’s largest and stinkiest flower—infects its host plants.

Next, Molina hopes to learn how to tip the balance toward Rafflesia.