Rafflesia
Genus of flowering plants / From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Dear Wikiwand AI, let's keep it short by simply answering these key questions:
Can you list the top facts and stats about Rafflesia?
Summarize this article for a 10 year old
Rafflesia (/rəˈfliːz(i)ə, -ˈfliːʒ(i)ə, ræ-/),[2] or stinking corpse lily,[3] is a genus of parasitic flowering plants in the family Rafflesiaceae.[4] The species have enormous flowers, the buds rising from the ground or directly from the lower stems of their host plants; one species has the largest flower in the world. Plants of the World Online lists up to 41 species from this genus,[4] all of them are found throughout Southeast Asia.
Rafflesia | |
---|---|
Rafflesia arnoldii flowers in Bengkulu, Indonesia | |
Scientific classification | |
Kingdom: | Plantae |
Clade: | Tracheophytes |
Clade: | Angiosperms |
Clade: | Eudicots |
Clade: | Rosids |
Order: | Malpighiales |
Family: | Rafflesiaceae |
Genus: | Rafflesia R.Br. ex Thomson bis[1] |
Type species | |
Rafflesia arnoldii R.Br. | |
Species | |
See Classification section |
Western Europeans first learned about plants of this genus from French surgeon and naturalist Louis Deschamps when he was in Java between 1791 and 1794; but his notes and illustrations, seized by the British in 1803, were not available to western science until 1861.[5] The first British person to see one was Joseph Arnold in 1818, in the Indonesia rainforest in Bengkulu, Sumatra, after a Malay servant working for him discovered a flower and pointed it out to him.[6] The flower, and the genus, was later named after Stamford Raffles,[7] the leader of the expedition and the founder of the British colony of Singapore.
The following is from Arnold's account of discovering the flower:[6]
Here I rejoice to tell you I happened to meet with what I consider as the greatest prodigy of the vegetable world. I had ventured some way from the party, when one of the Malay servants came running to me ... To tell you the truth, had I been alone, and had there been no witnesses, I should, I think, have been fearful of mentioning the dimensions of this flower, so much does it exceed every flower I have seen or heard of.