Follow Here Now on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, iHeart Radio or wherever you listen to your podcasts.
Canterbury-based botanists Dr Julie Barcelona and Dr Pieter Pelser met in the US in the mid-2000s.
It was a love - or obsession - for plants of tropical jungles that really brought them together.
What ensued has been years of shared discoveries and adventures, and some peculiar romantic gestures.
Barcelona and Pelser are renowned for their work on the large and unusual flower rafflesia.
The pair have together found and named at least three new species of rafflesia in their many adventures to the Phillipines, and also run the online repository Co's Digital Flora of the Phillipines.
Dr Julie Barcelona and Dr Pieter Pelser with a rafflesia. Photo:
Their discoveries have helped put the islands at the centre of interest and research on this largely unknown species.
It is so unique that all but one species are found only on single islands..
Rafflesia can grow from between the size of a dinner plate to five feet wide.
They are very unusual in that they are entirely contained within the tissue of their host plants, only emerging to produce its spectacular flowers - the largest of all flowering plants with a rather distinct odour - that of a rotting carcass.
