The largest flower in the world comes from a leafless plant from Mayla. It’s a parasitic plant that has grapevine like roots and a fleshy flower which is the only part of the plant that appears above the ground. The flower is approximately three foot across and can weigh up to five pounds. The plant is said to exude an order similar to decaying flech which attracts carrion flies that pollinate the plant.

According to the Guiness Book of Records, the largest flower in the world came from the Rafflesia Arnoldii, which measured three feet in diameter, was 3/4 inch thick and weighed fifteen pounds.

This magnificiently colourful flower is both strange and baffling. It blooms as a single flower which has no roots, no stem or leaves.

Propogation of this unique plant is rather tricky. Each flower produces just one seed and this seed can only germinate if it succeeds in lodging itself in the tissue of one particular cissus vine host known as Tetrastigma, which usually crawls along the rainforest floors. Rafflesia is usually floor bound. The flower extracts food from the vine by extending threadlike filaments into its tissue. Its penchant for attaching exclusively to the Tetrastigma partly explains why the flower is very rare. The sighting of this flower in it’s natural habitat depends on a combination of planning, keeping in touch with people in the know, and a big batch of luck.

The plant is commonly called the “stinking corpse lily.” It has also comonly been dubbed the “giant panda of the plant world” because this rare and endangered species only naturally grows in the rain forests of Sumatra and Borneo in the Malay Archipelago.

You would have to see this plant to believe how very odd it is. A plant to see if you ever get the chance. Until next week, Happy Thanksgiving, and keep an eye out for those odd plants.