Woman on phone in hotel room. (Photo by DreamPictures/Getty Images)

“The titan arum or Amorphophallus titanum (from Ancient Greek amorphos, “without form, misshapen” + phallos, “phallus”, and titan, “giant”) is a flowering plant with the largest unbranched inflorescence in the world. The titan arum's inflorescence is not as large as that of the Talipot palm, Corypha umbraculifera, but the inflorescence of the Talipot palm is branched rather than unbranched”. – Wikipedia

Photo: Kew Gardens employee Lauren Bird Royal examines the flowering of the Titan Arum lily at the Botanical Gardens at Kew on September 30, 2005 in London, England. For the first time in horticultural history, the Titan Arum lily can be seen at all three active stages in its lifecycle – in flower, fruit and leaf.The flowering corm is nearly three metres tall and weighs 91kg and is very rarely seen outside of the rainforests of Sumatra, Indonesia. (Photo by Scott Barbour/Getty Images)

An Indian paramilitary trooper stands guard next to a mural along a street ahead of the G20 meeting in Srinagar on May 19, 2023. (Photo by Tauseef Mustafa/AFP Photo)

Icelandic horses play on a meadow in Wehrheim near Frankfurt, Germany, as the sun rises on Tuesday, May 28, 2024. (Photo by Michael Probst/AP Photo)

A photo taken on October 20, 2024, shows various patterns left on the beach after the ebb tide at the Yanghe Estuary wetland in Jiaozhou Bay in Qingdao, Shandong province, China. (Photo by Costfoto/NurPhoto/Rex Features/Shutterstock)

A fighter jet flies above as Ukrainian soldiers sit on an armoured personnel carrier in Kramatorsk, in eastern Ukraine April 16, 2014. Ukrainian government forces and separatist pro-Russian militia staged rival shows of force in eastern Ukraine on Wednesday amid escalating rhetoric on the eve of crucial four-power talks in Geneva on the former Soviet country's future. (Photo by Marko Djurica/Reuters)

“Cassowaries are large, flightless birds related to emus and (more distantly) to ostriches, rheas, and kiwis”, writes Olivia Judson in the September issue of National Geographic magazine. How large? People-size: Adult males stand well over five foot five and top 110 pounds. Females are even taller, and can weigh more than 160 pounds. Dangerous when roused, they’re shy and peaceable when left alone. But even birds this big and tough are prey to habitat loss. The dense New Guinea and Australia rain forests where they live have dwindled. Today cassowaries might number 1,500 to 2,000. And because they help shape those same forests – by moving seeds from one place to another – “if they vanish”, Judson writes, “the structure of the forest would gradually change” too. (Photo by Christian Ziegler/National Geographic)

A participant prepares for the Red Bull Air Race World Championships in Abu Dhabi, United Arab Emirates on February 6, 2017. (Photo by Red Bull Content Pool/SIPA Press/Rex Features/Shutterstock)