A really big parasitic flower
Description:
Rafflesia
arnoldii is a plant with a large unusual looking flower from the
south-east Asian islands. It is the largest flower in the world, not counting
composite flowers. It can grow over 1 meter in diameter and weight over 10
kilograms. Instead of offering a sweet reward in the form of nectar to attract
insect pollinators it has adopted a different strategy. It emits a smell like a
rotting corpse which attracts the flesh eating insects which act as their
pollinators. The plant is completely parasitic and does not produce chlorophyll
of its own. When it is not flowering the entire plant is made up of thin
parasitic threads living on other plants and absorbing their nutrients. The
flower takes 9 months to mature but it only flowers for 5-7 days.
Distribution:
Rafflesia arnoldii is known
from the Islands of Borneo and Sumatra.
Classification:
Note here that there are many
botanists who don't recognise plant phyla or classes, because traditional
grouping at these levels have apparently been shown not to be monophyletic (see
my Linnean
classification page). They also seem to be unable to erect natural
groups at these higher levels which do need meet fierce opposition among
botanists. Instead they erect divisions which are based on certain
characteristics. I'm not a botanist myself, but I will use old plant phyla and
my own variation of the classes in my classifications because it makes thing
simpler. In my own variation use an Angiosperm Phylogeny Website.
I accept their monocots group as Monocotyledon and interpret their Eudicots as
Dicotyledon. I will cross any other bridges as I come to them.
Kingdom: Plantae
Phylum: Angiosperms
Class: Dicotyledon
Order: Malpighiales
Family: Rafflesiaceae
Genus: Rafflesia
Species: Rafflesia
arnoldii
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