What is "rafflesia"

Rafflesia \Raf*fle"si*a\ (r[a^]f*fl[=e]"zh[i^]*[.a]), n. [NL. Named from its discoverer, Sir S. Raffles.] (Bot.) A genus of stemless, leafless plants, living parasitically upon the roots and stems of grapevines in Malaysia. The flowers have a carrionlike odor, and are very large, in one species ( Rafflesia Arnoldi) having a diameter of two or three feet.

genus of Malaysian plants, 1820, named for Sir T. Stamford Raffles (1781-1826), British governor of Sumatra, who introduced it to the West, + abstract noun ending -ia. He reports the native name was petimum sikinlili "Devil's betel-box."

n. (context botany English) Any of several large parasitic plants, of the genus ''Rafflesia'', from South East Asia, that have no roots, stems or leaves; ''Rafflesia arnoldii'' has the largest known flower with a diameter of over a yard.

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, in Indonesia, Malaysia, Thailand and the Philippines. It was first discovered 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. It was later found in the Indonesian rain forest in Bengkulu, Sumatra by an Indonesian guide working for Dr. Joseph Arnold in 1818, and named after Sir Thomas Stamford Raffles, the leader of the expedition.

The plant has no stems, leaves or true roots. It is a 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 in diameter, and weigh up to . Even one of the smallest species, R. baletei, has 12 cm diameter flowers. The flowers look and smell like rotting flesh, hence its local names which translate to " corpse flower" or "meat flower" (see below). 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 hermaphroditic 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 known as Puspa langka (Rare flower) or Padma Raksasa (Giant flower), the Sabah state in Malaysia, and of the Surat Thani Province, Thailand.

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.

Raffelesia is a Belgian metalcore band from Zeebrugge, formed in 2005 as part of the H8000 scene. Their style has also been described as death metal and hardcore punk.