Rafflesia
Rafflesia arnoldi
Rafflesia cantleyi
Rafflesia gadutensis
Rafflesia hasseltii
Rafflesia keithii
Rafflesia kerrii
Rafflesia manillana
Rafflesia micropylora
Rafflesia patma
Rafflesia pricei
Rafflesia rochussenii
Rafflesia schadenbergiana
Rafflesia speciosa
Rafflesia tengku-adlinii
Rafflesia tuan-mudae
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Rafflesia is a
genus of
parasitic flowers. It contains 18 species (including 4 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 5-petaled flower with a diameter up to one meter, and weighting up to 10 kilogram. The flower smells like rotting meat, hence its local name translates to
corpse flower. It is parasitic on a vine, spreading its roots inside the vine. The fruit is eaten by
tree shrews.
The species
Rafflesia arnoldi 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); its individual flowers are arranged in a
spadix.
