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 Southeast Asia,
mainly 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 Indonesianrainforest in Bengkulu, Sumatra by an Indonesian guide working for Joseph Arnold in
1818, and named after Sir Stamford Raffles, the leader of the expedition.

The plant has no stems, leaves or roots. It is a holoparasite of vines in the

genus Tetrastigma(Vitaceae), spreading its absorptive organ, the haustorium, inside the tissue
of the vine.[1] The only part of the plant that can be seen outside the host vine is the five-
petalled flower. In some species, such as Rafflesia arnoldii, the flower may be over 100
centimetres (39 in) in diameter, and weigh up to 10 kilograms (22 lb). 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, where it is known as puspa langka (rare
flower) or padma paksasa (giant flower), of Sabah state in Malaysia, and of Surat Thani
Province in Thailand. In Thailand, Rafflesia can be observed in Khao Sok National Park where
the flowers are numbered and monitored by the park rangers.[2]
Rafflesia are also remarkable for showing a large horizontal transfer of genes from their host
plants. This is well known among bacteria, but not higher organisms.[1]