阿诺尔特大花草种

阿诺尔特大花草于1990年与蝴蝶兰和双瓣茉莉一同被选为印度尼西亚的国花。

Rafflesia arnoldii is a species of flowering plant in the parasitic genus Rafflesia within the family Rafflesiaceae. It is native to the rainforests of Sumatra and Borneo.

It is commonly known as the corpse flower or giant padma. The former name comes from its smell being similar to that of decaying flesh.

It is noted for producing the largest individual flower on Earth. There are plants with larger flowering organs like the titan arum (Amorphophallus titanum) and talipot palm (Corypha umbraculifera); however, those are clusters of many flowers.

Rafflesia arnoldii is one of the three national flowers in Indonesia, the other two being the white jasmine (Jasminum sambac) and moon orchid (Phalaenopsis amabilis). It was officially recognised as a national "rare flower" (Indonesian: puspa langka) in Presidential Decree No. 4 in 1993.

Taxonomy

The first European to find Rafflesia was the ill-fated French explorer Louis Auguste Deschamps. He was a member of a French scientific expedition to Asia and the Pacific, detained by the Dutch for three years on the Indonesian island of Java, where, in 1797, he collected a specimen, which was probably what is now known as R. patma. During the return voyage in 1798, his ship was taken by the British, with whom France was at war, and all his papers and notes were confiscated. Joseph Banks is said to have agitated for the return of the stolen documents, but apparently to no avail; they were lost, turned up for sale around 1860, went to the British Museum of Natural History, where they were promptly lost again. They did not see the light of day until 1954, when they were rediscovered at the Museum. To everyone's surprise, his notes and drawings indicate that he had found and studied the plants long before the British.

Regional names

It is called kerubut in Sumatra. In the kecamatan ('district') of Pandam Gadang, it is known as cendawan biriang in the Minangkabau language.

Description

Although Rafflesia is a vascular plant, it lacks any observable leaves, stems or even roots, and does not have chlorophyll. It lives as a holoparasite on vines of the genus Tetrastigma, most commonly T. angustifolium. Similar to fungi, individuals grow as a mass of thread-like strands of tissue completely embedded within and in intimate contact with surrounding host cells from which nutrients and water are obtained. It can only be seen outside the host plant when it is ready to reproduce; the only part of Rafflesia that is identifiable as distinctly plant-like are the flowers, though even these are unusual since they attain massive proportions, are reddish-brown with white spots, and stink of rotting flesh. According to Sandved, the flower opens with a hissing sound.

The flower of Rafflesia arnoldii grows to a diameter of around 1 m (3 ft 3 in), and weighs up to 11 kg (24 lb). According to the Mongabay institution, the single largest R.

Ecology

Habitat

Rafflesia arnoldii is found in both secondary and primary rainforests.

The only host plant species of R. arnoldii is Tetrastigma leucostaphylum in West Sumatra. Tetrastigma are themselves parasites of a sort, using the strength and upright growth of other surrounding plants to reach the light. The host plants of the host plants – the trees that Tetrastigma uses to climb up to light, are relatively limited in number of species, although they are generally the closest tree to the vine. When it is young, at least at the locations studied in West Sumatra, areas of primary forest, the vine climbs on sapling trees and bushes of Laportea stimulans and Coffea canephora in the undergrowth, in the subcanopy a Campnosperma species is the most important, whereas the only large tree the vine grows in is also Laportea stimulans.

Conservation

It has not been assessed for the IUCN Red List, but the conservation status of the Rafflesia arnoldii is currently of concern due to anthropogenic and biological factors. Anthropogenic factors contributing to the decline are primarily deforestation and harvesting; biological factors contributing to the decline include the plant's dioecious nature, limited population, and skewed sex ratio, with the majority of the flowers being male. However, ecotourism is thought to be a main threat to the species. At locations which are regularly visited by tourists the number of flower buds produced per year has decreased.