Rafflesia
|
|
Rafflesia is a genus of parasitic flowers. It contains 18 species (including four incompletely known species as recognized by Meijer 1997), all found in South-East Asia, on the Malay Peninsula, Borneo, Sumatra and Kalimantan, and the Philippines. The flowers have no leaves and hardly any stem, just a huge speckled five-petaled flower with a diameter up to one metre, and weighing up to 10 kg. Even the smallest species, R. manillana, has 20 cm diameter flowers. The flowers smell like rotting meat, hence its local names which translate to "corpse flower" or "meat flower". It is parasitic on a vine, spreading its roots inside the vine. The fruit is eaten by tree shrews.
The species Rafflesia arnoldii is the world's largest single flower. It was discovered in the Indonesian rain forest by Sir Thomas Stamford Raffles and Dr. Joseph Arnold in 1818.
The world's largest inflorescence is borne by Titan Arum (Amorphophallus titanum).
External links
- Rafflesia gallery (http://www.science.siu.edu/parasitic-plants/Rafflesiaceae/Rafflesia.gallery) - photos of most speciesde:Rafflesie