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Published online 12 December 2002 | Nature | doi:10.1038/news021209-9

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Flowers play rotten trick on flies

Insects fooled into fertilizing foul-smelling blooms.

Unlike a rose, a dead-horse arum's name sums up its smell perfectly. The flower's pungent scent of rotting meat dupes blowflies into spreading its pollen, biologists have shown.

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