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Division: Magnoliophyta
Class:Magnoliopsida
Order:Malpighiales
Family:Rafflesiaceae
Genus:Rafflesia
Species:R.arnoldii
The corpse flower, also known as the giant padma or Rafflesia arnoldii, is a species of flowering plant that belongs to the parasitic genus Rafflesia. It is famous for yielding the biggest single blossom on Earth. It smells strongly and offensively like decomposing flesh. Borneo and Sumatra's rainforests are home to it. The titan arum (Amorphophallus titanum) and talipot palm (Corypha umbraculifera), although they have larger flowering organs, are technically clusters of numerous flowers.
Rafflesia arnoldii is one of Indonesia's three national flowers, along with white jasmine (Jasminum sambac) and moon orchid (Phalaenopsis amabilis). In 1993, Presidential Decree No. 4 designated it as a national "rare flower" (Indonesian: puspa langka).
Taxonomy
The ill-fated French explorer Louis Auguste Deschamps was the first European to discover Rafflesia. He was a member of a French scientific expedition to Asia and the Pacific, and he was imprisoned by the Dutch for three years on Java, where he collected what is now known as R. patma in 1797. During his return voyage in 1798, his ship was intercepted by the British, with whom France was at war, and all of his papers and notes were confiscated.Joseph Banks is said to have lobbied for the return of the stolen documents, but to no avail: they were lost, turned up for sale around 1860, and went to the British Museum of Natural History, only to be lost again. They were not discovered until 1954, when they were rediscovered at the Museum. His notes and drawings, to everyone's surprise, show that he discovered and studied the plants long before the British. It is thought that the British purposefully hid Deschamps' notes in order to claim the 'glory' of 'discovery' for themselves.During an expedition led by the newly appointed Lieutenant-Governor of Bencoolen, Stamford Raffles, in 1818, the British surgeon Joseph Arnold collected a specimen of another Rafflesia species discovered by a Malay servant in a part of Sumatra that was then a British colony called British Bencoolen (now Bengkulu). Arnold became ill and died soon after the discovery, and the preserved material was sent to Banks.Banks gave the materials to Robert Brown, who was given the honour of studying them. Franz Bauer, the British Museum's resident botanical artist, was commissioned to create illustrations of the new plants. Brown eventually gave a speech before the Linnean Society of London meeting in June 1820, where he first introduced the genus and its two species. Brown named the plant Rafflesia after Sir Stamford Raffles. Bauer finished his pictures in mid-1821, but the article on the subject remained unfinished.In 1820, William Jack, Arnold's successor in the Sumatran Bencoolen colony, recollected the plant and was the first to officially describe it as R. titan. It is thought that Jack rushed the name to publication out of fear that the French would publish what they knew about the species, robbing the British of potential 'glory.' Brown, apparently aware of Jack's work, had the article published in the Transactions of the Linnean Society a year later, formally introducing the name R. arnoldii (in his article, he ignores Jack's work).Because Jack's name takes precedence, R. arnoldii should technically be a synonym of R. titan, but at the time, it was common in Britain to recognise names proposed by well-known scientists such as Brown over what should be the correct taxonomic name. Willem Meijer, a Dutch Rafflesia expert, noted this in his 1997 monographic addition to the Flora Malesiana book series. Rather than relegating R. arnoldii to synonymy, he declared that R. titan was "incompletely known": the plant material used by Jack to describe the plant had been lost.In response to Meijer's findings, British botanical historian David Mabberley attempted to save Brown's names from synonymy in 1999. In taxonomy, this is known as 'conservation,' and it usually entails submitting a formal proposal to the committee of the International Code of Botanical Nomenclature (ICBN). Mabberley believed he had discovered a way around such a formal review by noting that, while Brown was notoriously slow to get his papers published, he frequently had a handful of pre-print pages privately printed to exchange with other botanists: one of these pre-prints had recently been purchased by the Hortus Botanicus Leiden and was dated April 1821.Mabberley thus proposed that this document be considered the official effective publication, claiming that doing so would render Jack's previous name invalid. For some reason, Mabberley dates Jack's publication in 1821, a few months after Brown's pre-print, rather than the 1820 publication date in Singapore. Confoundingly, the record in the International Plant Names Index (IPNI) still has another date, "1823?", as it did before Meijer's 1997 work in the Index Kewensis. Institutions such as the Index Kewensis accepted Mabberley's suggestions for Brown's name.
Mabberley also noted that the genus Rafflesia was thus validated for the first time by an anonymous report on the meeting, which was published in the Annals of Philosophy in September 1820. (the name was technically an unpublished nomen nudum until this publication). Mabberley claimed Samuel Frederick Gray was the author. However, because that is nowhere stated in the Annals, according to Article 46.8 of the ICBN code, Mabberley was incorrect to formally attribute the validation to Gray. The IPNI thus attributed the name's validation to one Thomas Thomson, the editor of the Annals in 1820. Mabberley acknowledged his mistake in 2017.This Thomson was not the botanist Thomas Thomson, who was three years old in 1820, but his identically named father, a chemist, and Rafflesia was thus the only botanical taxon published by this man.
Errata
According to an old Kew webpage, Sophia Hull was present when the specimen was collected and finished the colour drawing of the plant that Arnold had begun. It was also stated that Brown had intended to name the plant genus Arnoldii.
Regional names
In Sumatra, it is known as kerubut. It is known as cendawan biriang in the Minangkabau language in the kecamatan ('district') of Pandam Gadang.
Description
Rafflesia is a vascular plant, but it has no visible leaves, stems, or roots, and it lacks chlorophyll. It lives on vines of the genus Tetrastigma as a holoparasite. Individuals, like fungi, grow as a mass of thread-like strands of tissue that are completely embedded within and in close contact with surrounding host cells, from which nutrients and water are obtained. Rafflesia can only be seen outside the host plant when it is ready to reproduce; the only part of Rafflesia that is distinctly plant-like are the flowers, which attain massive proportions, have a reddish-brown coloration, and stink of rotting flesh.Rafflesia arnoldii flowers can reach a diameter of one metre (3.3 feet) and weigh up to 11 kilogrammes (24 lb). These flowers emerge from very large, cabbage-like, maroon or dark brown buds that are typically about 30 cm (12 in) wide, but the largest (and largest flower bud ever recorded) was found in May 1956 at Mount Sago, Sumatra and was 43 cm (17 in) in diameter. The bud is commonly referred to as a 'knop' by Indonesian researchers (knob).
Ecology
Habitat :-Rafflesia arnoldii can be found in both primary and secondary rainforests.
Tetrastigma leucostaphylum is the only host plant species of R. arnoldii in West Sumatra. Tetrastigma are parasites in their own right, relying on the strength and upright growth of other plants to reach the light.The host plants of the host plants - the trees that Tetrastigma uses to climb up to light - are relatively few in number, despite being the closest tree to the vine. When young, at least in the areas studied in West Sumatra, the vine climbs on sapling trees and bushes of Laportea stimulans and Coffea canephora in the undergrowth, a Campnosperma species is the most important in the subcanopy, and the only large tree the vine grows in is also Laportea stimulans.
Tetrastigma can completely envelop its host at the subcanopy level, choking out the light to the point where the forest floor below the canopy is completely dark - this appears to be preferred by Rafflesia arnoldii, as the most knops are found in the darkest parts of the forest. The most commonly associated plant with Rafflesia arnoldii is the smallish tree Coffea canephora (the well-known robusta coffee), which is not native to the area and was brought there from Africa. It covers the majority of the undergrowth, with an Importance Value Index (IVI) of more than 100%, and is also the main component of the subcanopy, with an IVI of 52.74 percent. Toona sureni is the dominant tall tree in these areas, with a canopy IVI of 4.97 percent.Other important components of the ecosystem around Rafflesia arnoldii plants at this location include the Urticaceae Laportea stimulans (IVI: 55.81 percent) and Villebrunea rubescens (IVI: 50.10 percent) in the undergrowth, as well as the wild cinnamon Cinnamomum burmannii (IVI: 24.33 percent) and the fig Ficus disticha (IVI: 24.33 percent) (IVI: 23.83 percent ). Toona sureni (IVI: 34.11 percent), Laportea stimulans (IVI: 24.62 percent), Cinnamomum burmannii (IVI: 18.45 percent), and Ficus ampelas are the main plants in the subcanopy (IVI: 14.53 percent ). Aside from the Toona, the main trees found in the canopy are a Shorea species (IVI: 26.24 percent), Aglaia argentea (IVI: 25.94 percent), Ficus fistulosa (IVI: 16.08 percent), and Macaranga gigantea (IVI: 13.06 percent ).Rafflesia arnoldii has been discovered to infect hosts in alkaline, neutral, and acidic soils. It is not found far from bodies of water. It has been discovered at altitudes ranging from 490 to 1,024 metres. Rafflesia arnoldii has been discovered to infect hosts in alkaline, neutral, and acidic soils. It is not found far from bodies of water. It has been discovered at altitudes ranging from 490 to 1,024 metres.
Reproduction:- The buds take months to develop, and the flower only lasts a few days. Because the flowers are gonochorous - either male or female - both flowers are required for pollination to be successful.
When Rafflesia is ready to reproduce, it forms a tiny bud outside the root or stem of its host and grows for a year. The developing cabbage-like head eventually opens to reveal the flower. Inside the flower, the stigmas or stamens are attached to a spiked disc. Flies and beetles are drawn to the stench of rotting meat. To successfully pollinate, flies and/or beetles must visit both male and female plants in that order. Round berries with numerous minute seeds are produced as the fruit.The late flowers are visited by the flies Drosophila colorata, Chrysomya megacephala, and Sarcophaga haemorrhoidalis. Euprenolepis black ants may feed on developing flower buds, possibly killing them.
Conservation
It has not been evaluated for inclusion on the IUCN Red List. Ecotourism is thought to be a major threat to the species; at tourist destinations, the number of flower buds produced per year has decreased.
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