Balanophoraceae

A fully parasitic family with no chlorophyll, true leaves, or roots of its own — instead a fleshy, often brightly coloured tuber-like body erupts directly from a host plant's root, pushing up a compact, mushroom-like flower head made of thousands of tiny flowers packed together.

So completely dependent on its host and so unlike an ordinary plant in appearance that early botanists mistook it for a fungus — one of the most extreme parasites in the flowering-plant kingdom.

To check whether a plant belongs to Balanophoraceae, compare the leaf arrangement, leaf type, flower symmetry, fruit type, and one distinctive marker together. A single feature can mislead; the family pattern is the combination.