Of the millions of flowers in the world, one of the most rare flowers also happens to be the largest! The Rafflesia arnoldii holds the grand title of world’s largest flower.
This flower grows ‘invisibly,’ with no leaves, roots, or stem you can see! It’s a sort of parasite that grows inside the roots of only three particular species of a vine in the Tetrastigma genus.
These plants are amazing! The Rafflesia starts out kind of like a stump on it’s host, and grows into a bud, which is the size of a cabbage!
Many of these buds may rot before they ever get the chance to bloom! These plants take as long (or longer) than a human baby, taking nine or more months to ever ‘reach maturity’ and bloom!
When these amazing plants do finally bloom, the are very large! Their petals resemble a slab of meat (because it’s red, and dotted white), of which they have five, each one may weigh up to 15 pounds, with the flower it’s self being several feet across! The center has a large circle hole in it as well, about the size of a basketball!
Aside from it’s large size, and questionable beauty, this flower also gives you a little something else to remember it by, it’s smell. It is not a particularly pleasant smell, since it produces a gallon or more of it’s nectar, which just happens to have the smell of rotting flesh. They smell like this though in order to attract insects for pollination.
After all the hard work, and mystery this flower is finally coming into bloom (scientists are still unsure of how exactly this particulars flower’s pollination works!). The bloom that will only last a few days!
After those few days, the flower disintegrates making a big mess, and leaving behind a fruit (15 cm or bigger) containing tons of seeds, which small animals carry off, which is thought to be part of it’s distribution process of the Rafflesia (kirchersociety).
The Rafflesia fights for the title of world’s largest plant with another unusual, and even larger, plant. The Titan arum, which is also known by it’s delicate name, the ‘Corpse Flower.’ It’s known as such because it shares the ‘rotting flesh’ smell of the Rafflesia. The smell can be so strong, people have been known to faint if they get to close to it!
The Titan (aptly named) is a extremely fast grower and can reach an astounding size, reaching a height of up to 12 feet! The Titan can also weigh as much as 170 pounds! That’s about the size of a grown man!
However, even though the Titan is a huge flower, and bigger than the Rafflesia, it doesn’t get the title ‘world’s largest flower,’ because it’s technically not a single flower! It’s made up of many, tiny flowers, which is known as an inflorescence. The Titan is however the world’s largest inflorescence (loc)!
To see some good pictures of these amazing flowers, check out this site (loc)! At least you can’t smell them online.
