Rafflesia, a giant flower
They were not the first Europeans to see the flower. A French naturalist had made notes on the flower some years earlier but his notes never reached Europe, the headquarters of Western science in those days; Arnold’s notes and sketches did, and so the monstrous flower was named Rafflesia arnoldii after him and the leader of the expedition, Stamford Raffles.
The Rafflesia is a parasite that infects the roots of the Tetrastigma vines (related to the grape vine). The plant grows fully within the host, doing without leaves, stem or roots of its own. When it is ready to bloom, a bud erupts on the sides of the host plant. Over months, the bud grows to the size of a cabbage before erupting into a five petalled flower, generally reddish orange in colour, with white spots. The flower, with a spread of about one metre and weighing around ten kilograms, is the largest known flower in the world. It mimics the smell of a rotting animal carcass to draw its pollinators, carrion flies, to it. The flies must do their work of pollination within a week because the flower dries up by the fifth day.
Male and female flowers usually grow close together. The fruit is a berry containing hundreds of sticky seeds which are carried across the forest floor by tree shrews and other small forest animals.
There are about 20 species of Rafflesia growing chiefly in Indonesia, Malaysia, Thailand and the Philippines. They are national flowers and tourist attractions in these countries.
