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Rafflesia in bloom.
© Gerhard Winter, 1998 |
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After a few days the "flowering beast" begins to rot , giving off a foul odor.
© Gerhard Winter, 1998 |
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This flower was subsequently given the scientific name of Rafflesia arnoldi in honor of Raffles and his botanist. It was Arnold who described the plant as, "the greatest prodigy of the vegetable world." The Rafflesia has no roots, leaves or stem. It begins its life cycle quietly enough, growing slowly inside the trailing root of the vines, and first appears as a small dark nub. After about nine months, it matures into a large, cabbage-sized bud whose gigantic red petals "with numerous pustular spots of a lighter color," in Sir Raffles' words, finally unfold into a spectacular blossom.
Beauty turns beastly in only a few days, however, when the "flowering beast" begins to smell like rotting meat, attracting blue bottle flies for pollination. Rafflesia was labeled a "vegetable monster" by turn-of-the-century European botanists, because at this point in its cycle it becomes insect-infested, putrefying as the petals blacken and wither.
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