9. Cuckoopint

 Arum maculatum

So this is it cuckoopint or in some books cuckoo pint Arum maculatum, I'm never really sure if its two words or one?

I never, ever 'cut and paste' but this time I had to, below is a direct quote from Encyclopaedia Britannica website (2020).  

"The cuckoopint plant is noted for its unusual pollination strategy. It attracts minute flies by means of a fetid smell. This odour is generated in the early evening along with considerable heat, which helps to volatilize the chemicals. Flies visiting the plant enter the floral trap of the spathe through a zone of bristles and then fall into a smooth-walled floral chamber from which escape is impossible. Gorging themselves on a nutritious stigmatic secretion produced by the female flowers at the base of the spadix, the trapped flies effect cross-pollination if they have previously visited another cuckoopint. At night the female stigmas no longer function, and the male flowers, situated much higher on the spadix, release a rain of pollen onto the insects. The next day, when smell, heat, and food are gone, the pollen-laden insects are allowed to escape by a wilting of the bristles. Usually the escaped flies are soon recaptured by another inflorescence, which is still in the smelly receptive stage, and cross-pollination again ensues. Superb timing mechanisms underlie these events. The heat-generating metabolic process in the inflorescence is triggered by a hormone, calorigen, originating in the male flower buds only under the right conditions."

The reason I have put this quote in instead of digesting the information and re-writing it for you, is...I don't actually think I could put this any better or more succinctly?

In my photo above it has not yet flowered so in the interest of showing it in its full glory the next photos are free online stock pic's.

The photo's above show the development of the plants reproductive features and the cross sections show the hairs which trap the flies overnight, which were attracted by the fetid 'dead meat' smell it produces along with the heat at night, to spread that smell.

Other common species mimic rotting flesh to attract flies to pollinate, Phallus impudicus Stinkhorn fungus uses the same 'attractive smell', maybe not attractive to humans, but flies love a bit of rotting meat, and will be seen crawling all over the olive green 'head' of stinkhorn, unwittingly collecting spores on their feet.

Encyclopaedia Britannica (2020) Cuckoopint. Available at: https://www.britannica.com/plant/cuckoopint (Accessed on: 02/02/20)