Rafflesia is a genus of parasitic flowering plants found in Southeast Asia. It contains some of the largest flowers in the world. The flowers can be over 100 cm in diameter but only last a few days before decomposing. Rafflesia lacks leaves, stems, and chlorophyll, existing entirely embedded within its vine host where it drains nutrients. Its foul odor attracts insects to pollinate its rare unisexual flowers across long distances. Little is known about this mysterious plant due to its elusive nature and remote habitat which is increasingly threatened by deforestation.

1. Rafflesia
“ Big is beautiful”
Dr. Khalid Rehman Hakeem
Post Doc. Researcher
Faculty of Forestry, UPM

2. Who am I ?
Post doc Research Scientist
Universiti Putra Malaysia
Serdang, Darul Ehsan, Selangor-Malaysia-43400
www.upm.edu.my
ACADEMIC PROFILE:
PhD (Botany) Jamia Hamdard (www.jamiahamdard.edu), with thesis title as“
Proteomics and Nanobiotechnological approach for the improvement of Nitrogen
use Efficiency (NUE) in Rice”in 2011
MSc. (Environmental Botany), Jamia Hamdard, New Delhi in 2006 (First Division)
MSc. (Ecology & Environment) Sikkim Manipal University of Health &
Technological Sciences, Gangtok in 2005 (First Division)
Research publication (Publishing Career starts in 2011)
Papers: 20 (some under review)
Books: 07 (Published) 05 (Under process)
Book Chapters: 10
Visit my website: khalidhakeem.weebly.com
2

3. Mysteries of Nature

4. Unlike other parasites that are important to study due to the
economic loss they cause to important crops, Rafflesia causes
economic benefit through ecotourism: thousands of people go to
Sabah (Malaysian, Borneo) and other parts of Malaysia annually
hoping to see Rafflesia blooms (Nais & Wilcock, 1998).

5. Introduction
• The Rafflesiaceae are leafless, stemless, and rootless
nonphotosynthetic parasites that live embedded in host
plants.
• Rafflesia is a genus of parasitic flowering plants. It contains approximately
28 species (including four incompletely characterized species as
recognized by Willem Meijer in 1997), all found in southeastern Asia, on
the Malay Peninsula, Borneo, Sumatra, Thailand and the Philippines
• Rafflesia was found in the Indonesian rain forest by an Indonesian guide
working for Dr. Joseph Arnold in 1818, and named after Sir Thomas
Stamford Raffles, the leader of the expedition. It was discovered even
earlier by Louis Deschamps in Java between 1791 and 1794, but his notes
and illustrations, seized by the British in 1803, were not available to
western science until 1861

6. • The plant has no stems, leaves or true roots. It is an holoparasite of
vines in the genus Tetrastigma (Vitaceae), spreading its absorptive
organ, the haustorium, inside the tissue of the vine. The only part of
the plant that can be seen outside the host vine is the five-petaled
flower. In some species, such as Rafflesia arnoldii, the flower may
be over 100 centimetres (39 in) in diameter, and weigh up to 11
kilograms (22 lb).
• Even the smallest species, R. baletei, has 12 cm diameter flowers.
The flowers look and smell (when ready for pollination) like rotten
body, hence its local names which translate to "corpse flower" or
"meat flower”.
• The foul odor attracts insects such as flies, which transport pollen
from male to female flowers. Most species have separate male and
female flowers, but a few have bisexual flowers. Little is known
about seed dispersal. However, tree shrews and other forest
mammals eat the fruits and disperse the seeds. Rafflesia is the
official state flower of Indonesia, the Sabah state in Malaysia, and of
the Surat Thani Province, Thailand.

7. Belum Valley is located, midway
Royal Belum State Park, Perak between the East and West Coasts.
The nearest towns are Grik in Perak
and Jeli in Kelantan which are
connected by the scenic East-West
Highway. The Royal Belum State
Park is partial of a incomparable
Belum-Temengor Forest Reserve, one
of a largest blocks of timberland in
Peninsular Malaysia. With 117,500
ha of area, it was announced as a
Royal Belum State Park by Sultan of
Perak on 31st Jul 2003.
This pleasant bliss is abounding with
extraordinary FLORA and FAUNA,
stoical especially of primitive
pleasant rainforest, that stays one of
a largest inexperienced timberland
pot with many stream systems, and
tiny grassland areas, some deserted
rural plots, and Temengor Lake ….
a vast synthetic lake.

11. • The name "corpse flower" applied to Rafflesia can be
confusing because this common name also refers to the titan
arum (Amorphophallus titanum) of the family Araceae.
• Moreover, because Amorphophallus has the world's largest
unbranched inflorescence, it is sometimes mistakenly
credited as having the world's largest flower. Both Rafflesia
and Amorphophallus are flowering plants, but they are only
distantly related. Rafflesia arnoldii has the largest "single"
flower of any flowering plant, at least in terms of weight. A.
titanum has the largest "unbranched" inflorescence, while
the talipot palm (Corypha umbraculifera) forms the largest
"branched" inflorescence, containing thousands of flowers;
the talipot is monocarpic, meaning the individual plants die
after flowering

12. Scientific classification
• Kingdom: Plantae
• (unranked): Angiosperms
• (unranked): Eudicots
• (unranked): Rosids
• Order: Malpighiales
• Family: Rafflesiaceae
• Genus: Rafflesia

13. Species
• Rafflesia arnoldii Rafflesia manillana
• Rafflesia aurantia Rafflesia micropylora
Rafflesia mira
• Rafflesia azlanii Rafflesia patma
• Rafflesia baletei Rafflesia philippensis
• Rafflesia bengkuluensis Rafflesia pricei
Rafflesia rochussenii
• Rafflesia cantleyi Rafflesia schadenbergiana
• Rafflesia gadutensis Rafflesia speciosa
• Rafflesia hasseltii Rafflesia tengku-adlinii
Rafflesia tuan-mudae
• Rafflesia keithii Rafflesia verrucosa
• Rafflesia kerrii
Unverified species
• Rafflesia leonardi
Rafflesia borneensis
• Rafflesia lobata Rafflesia ciliata
Rafflesia titan
Rafflesia witkampii

14. Malaysian species
• Species native to Malaysia include Rafflesia pricei, Rafflesia
tengku-adlinii, Rafflesia azlanii, Rafflesia keithii, Rafflesia
kerrii, Rafflesia hasseltii, Rafflesia cantleyi and Rafflesia
arnoldii. R. arnoldii boasts the world largest single bloom.
• Some endemic Malaysian species, such as R. keithii, begin
blooming at night and begin to decompose only two to three
days after blooming. The time from bud emergence to
flowering is six to nine months.
• Male and female flowers must be open simultaneously for
pollination to occur, hence successful pollination and fruit
production is quite rare. In addition to habitat loss, these
reproduction limitations are contributing factors to why many
species are endangered.
• R. keithii is found along the eastern slopes of Mount Kinabalu
in the Lohan Valley of Sabah. Rafflesia tuan-mudae is endemic
to only the Gunung Gading National Park of Sarawak.

15. Rafflesia arnoldii is rare and
fairly hard to locate. It is
especially difficult to locate
the flower in forests as the
buds take many months to
develop and the flower lasts
for just a few days.
Conservation status:
How many of these plants still survive is unknown, but as the remaining
primary forests of Borneo and Sumatra disappear, it can be assumed that their
numbers are dwindling. Many are known to be nearing extinction. Some
Environmentalists are developing ways to recreate the species' environment in
an effort to stimulate their recovery. This has proved unsuccessful so far. Steps
are also being taken to conserve the forests of Sumatra and Borneo.

16. The Life Cycle of a Rafflesia Plant
• Reproduction
– The Rafflesia's life cycle begins when the parasitic growths on the plant's vine root
form small buds that resemble cabbage.
• Bud Growth
– Rafflesia lacks leaves, stems and chlorophyll, and is incapable of photosynthesis.
Instead, the buds grow by living off of the plant's vine, draining nutrients and water
from it.
• Flowers
– In about nine months, the bud bursts, revealing an enormous, five-petaled flower. The
reddish-brown flowers give off a pungent odor similar to rotting flesh, which attracts
insects for pollination. Rafflesia plants are unisexual and most often produce either
male or female flowers at a single site. To succeed at pollinating the plant, insects
must visit both male and female flowers, which are usually not in close proximity to
one another.
• Fruit
– The fruit has smooth flesh that contains numerous tiny seeds. Once fruit and flower
have both reached maturity, which takes five to seven days, this marks the end of the
plant's life cycle.
• Seeds
– The smell of the fruit's dead flesh attracts indigenous animals. The animals distribute
the seeds, continuing the plant's life cycle.

18. Challenges to Studying Rafflesia
• First, individuals grow entirely embedded
within the body of the host plant that they
parasitize (Kuijt, 1969).
• Second, Rafflesia is rare in occurrence and can
only be found in relatively remote lowland
forests of Southeast Asia. In this region, much
of its habitat has been converted to farm land
or timber concessions and in some parts of its
range, the buds are harvested and sold for
their purported medicinal qualities.

19. • Third, even once Rafflesia individuals become
visible as flowers, these only survive a few
days before decomposing. All of these factors
make it difficult to even find Rafflesia sites
and even when they are known, the sites are
often not protected so there is no guarantee
that they will exist in subsequent years.

20. Latest Research
• Floral Gigantism in Rafflesiaceae
Phylogenetic analyses of mitochondrial, nuclear,
and plastid data showing that Rafflesiaceae are
derived from within Euphorbiaceae, the spurge
family. Most euphorbs produce minute flowers,
suggesting that the enormous flowers of
Rafflesiaceae evolved from ancestors with tiny
flowers.
Given the inferred phylogeny, it was estimated that
there was a circa 79-fold increase in flower diameter
on the stem lineage of Rafflesiaceae, making this
one of the most dramatic cases of size evolution
reported for eukaryotes.

21. Many Questions…….????
• Why so host specificity ?
• Polyploidy study (if any) ?
• Which nutrients they are taking from the
plants ?
• Exact role and ecological importance ?
• Lot of Molecular biology pending

22. Questions are welcome