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Don’t stop to smell the flowers. Indonesian officials may have found the largest flower ever, and it smells awful.
The flower belongs to the Rafflesia genus, whose members are known as corpse lilies or corpse flowers due to their odour of decaying flesh. The stink attracts the insect pollinators these species use to reproduce.
This flower appears to be the species Rafflesia tuan-mudae and it measures about 1.1 metres across – about 4 centimetres wider than the previous recorded largest flower, according to CNN Indonesia. It was found in the Maninjau Forest Conservation in West Sumatra’s Agam region.
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The previous record holder bloomed at the exact same spot, hinting that both may be flowers of the same individual plant. Rafflesia plants are parasitic. They have no leaves, stem or roots, and hide away inside their host plants – in this case a vine – until they are ready to reproduce. At that point a bud forms outside the host plant and slowly blooms over the course of up to a year.
The strange-looking bloom fits the flower’s gruesome common name with its thick, mottled red petals. Scientists from the Indonesian forest service will monitor the huge flower’s growth over the next week and watch for the mice and wild boar that sometimes eat corpse lilies.
After about a week, the flower will rot and die, leaving the plant invisible inside its host once more.
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