Exhibition "In the Forests of Borneo"
Rafflesia
video transcription
We were now on the spot where the Rafflesia grew (...) The newly expanded flower measured rather over 22 inches in diameter (...) As no one had described the Rafflesia of Mount Poe, I named it Rafflesia Tuan-mudae, in honour of the present Rajah.
Odoardo Beccari, 1902
Family: Rafflesiaceae
Scientific name: Rafflesia sp.
Geographic range: Southern Sunda region (from Thailand to the Philippines and the island of Java)
Rafflesia (genus Rafflesia), named in honour of the English politician Thomas Stamford Raffles (1781-1826), is a genus of rare plants typical of Southeast Asia and famous for their enormous mottled red flowers, with fleshy petals and a nauseating odour, which has evolved to attract pollinating flies. They are also unique organisms in terms of their biology. They are, in fact, an example of parasitic plants, i.e. plants that defy the traditional idea of an “autonomous” organism because, instead of performing photosynthesis and using light as a source of energy, they take advantage of the efforts of other plants (trees of the Tetrastigma genus), directly attacking their roots and extracting the organic compounds already synthesised. Tropical forests are home to many examples of this genus, but parasitic plants are are not absent in our latitudes either. In Europe and the Mediterranean, the genera Cuscuta, Cytinus, Lathraea, Monotropa and Neottia are examples of this, although they are much less conspicuous. They are not directly related to each other, despite living by the same “parasitic” strategy.
Since 1821, several dozen species of Rafflesia have been described, all with flowers capable of growing up to one metre in diameter and weighing over 10 kg. The most famous is probably Arnold's Rafflesia (Rafflesia arnoldii R.Br.), one of Indonesia's national plants, often cited as holding the absolute record for flower size in the entire plant world. Since 2020, some sources have reported a new record (111 cm) for the species that Beccari discovered in Sarawak, on Mount Pueh in July 1866, and named Tuan-muda’s Rafflesia (i.e., Rafflesia of the young Rajah) in honour of its protector, Charles Brooke (Rafflesia tuan-mudae Becc.).
Given the exceptional nature of the discovery, Beccari hastened to make it official just a few months after his return to Italy, on June 28th 1868, during a meeting of the Italian Society of Natural Sciences, and he returned to the subject in a “Note” published the same year in the Bulletin of the Italian Geographical Society:
In July, I went on an excursion to Mount Poe, where I found many rare and as yet undescribed plants, including a Rafflesia, whose flower is among the largest known to man.
Odoardo Beccari, 1868
Rafflesia arnoldii, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons
