Rafflesia
Sign in to saveRafflesia (), or stinking corpse lily, is a genus of parasitic flowering plants in the family Rafflesiaceae. 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; all of them are found in Southeast Asia.
AI overview
Rafflesia is a genus of parasitic plants found in Southeast Asia that produces enormous flowers, including the species with the world's largest flower. These unusual plants, also called stinking corpse lilies, grow directly on their host plants and include up to 41 species according to current records.
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Taxonomy · GBIF
GENUS
- KingdomPlantae
- PhylumTracheophyta
- ClassMagnoliopsida
- OrderMalpighiales
- FamilyRafflesiaceae
via GBIF · CC0
Wikidata facts
- Instance of
- taxon
- Parent taxon
- Rafflesiaceae
- Named after
- Thomas Stamford Raffles
- Image
- Rafflesia arnoldii Bengkulu 01.jpg
Show 5 more facts
Article
24 sectionsContents
- Description
- Names
- Taxonomy
- Evolution and phylogeny
- Accepted species
- Other names
- Loss of the chloroplast genome
- Distribution
- Malay Peninsula
- Malaysia
- Thailand
- Greater Sunda Islands
- Sumatra
- Java
- Borneo
- The Philippine Archipelago
- Visayas
- Mindanao species
- Ecology
- Uses
- See also
- References
- Further reading
- External links
Rafflesia (), or stinking corpse lily, is a genus of parasitic flowering plants in the family Rafflesiaceae. 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; all of them are found in Southeast Asia.
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 were seized by the British in 1798 and were not available to Western scientists until 1861. 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. The flower, and the genus, was later named after Stamford Raffles, the leader of the expedition and the founder of the British colony of Singapore.