New Delhi: After a day of trekking deep into a Sumatran rainforest, conservationist Septian ‘Deki’ Andriki knelt beside a blooming Rafflesia Hasseltii, and wept. The moment marked the culmination of Andriki’s 13-year search for one of the world’s rarest flowers—a chunky and stinky one—documented by a team that walked through tiger-patrolled forests in Sijunjung Regency of West Sumatra in Indonesia last month.
The team, which included Dr Chris Thorogood from Oxford University’s Botanic Garden, Joko Witono from Indonesia’s National Research and Innovation Agency (BRIN), and Iswandi from the local Nagari Forest Management Institute, witnessed the flower unfurl before their eyes—a rare occurrence given the plant’s ephemeral blooming cycle.
What makes Rafflesia Hasseltii extraordinary
Rafflesia Hasseltii belongs to a genus of parasitic flowering plants that produce some of the largest flowers on Earth. This particular species can reach diameters of up to 70 centimetres and display striking blood-red petals with white spots—earning it the local Malay name “cendawan muka rimau” or “tiger-faced mushroom”.
It defies conventional characteristics. It has no leaves, stems, or roots, and does not rely on photosynthesis—the process through which green plants use sunlight, water and carbon dioxide to create their own food, and release oxygen.
Instead, it exists only with support from its host, typically vines from Tetrastigma, a plant of the grape family.
Rafflesia is what scientists call an “obligate holoparasite”—it cannot survive on its own. It has a network of thread-like cells that embed themselves deep into the host plant’s tissues to siphon off nutrition and water from it.
This dependency means that the flower won’t survive if there aren’t any Tetrastigma populations in the wild.
It takes months for the bud to develop before the flower blooms for merely five to seven days. Apart from its unpredictable timing, the flower lies on the dense forest bed, making it even more elusive to a human sighting.
To attract pollinators—primarily carrion flies—the flower emits a powerful odour resembling rotting flesh, earning the genus its common name “corpse flower”. (Not to be confused with ‘corpse flowers’ such as ‘Titan Arum’, which attract hordes of visitors to botanical gardens in UK’s Kew).
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A flower rarer than assumed
Confirmed sightings of R. Hasseltii are exceedingly rare.
Conservationist Septian Andriki, in an interview with local media, said, “I imagine more tigers have seen this flower than people.”
Rafflesia are only found in scattered spots in tropical rainforest of Malaysia, Singapore, Indonesia and Philippines. It is difficult to reproduce them in a lab or preserve dry specimens.
A 2023 assessment by scientists, among whom were Dr Thorogood and Witono, found that 42 known Rafflesia species face severe threats from habitat loss and about 95 percent of them were severely threatened. Still, only one species—Rafflesia Magnifica—was officially listed on the International Union for Conservation of Nature’s Red List, the assessment published in the journal Plants, People, Planet noted.
In Indonesia, though, the species are protected under a national regulation (PP No. 7/1999) and a 2020 regulation from the country’s Ministry of Environment and Forestry.
A gene thief
Adding to the plant’s many oddities is its genetic composition.
Research published in 2014 in Molecular Biology and Evolution said Rafflesia Lagascae, a related species, may be the first plant group to have completely lost its chloroplast genome—the one that codes for photosynthesis (PMC).
Remarkably, the study also traced a great deal of horizontal gene transfer (HGT) in Rafflesia. In HGT, genes move between separate organisms, outside the traditional parent-to-offspring inheritance. The phenomenon has been well-documented in bacteria and parasites, but it’s relatively rarer in complex beings like plants and animals.
Research published in PLOS Genetics in 2013 estimated that between 24 per cent and 41 per cent of DNA in Rafflesia’s mitochondria—powerhouse of the cell—were acquired from host plants through HGT, the highest proportion documented in any known organism (PLOS Genetics).
This finding baffled scientists. A biologist, quoted in a 2021 ScienceNews article, described it as “industrial scale” gene theft by Rafflesia.
The most commonly accepted theory for this abundant genetic transfer is believed to be Rafflesia’s entwined physical contact with its host. But much of its workings are yet to be decoded.
Traditional uses
Rafflesia buds have been used by indigenous communities for traditional medicine for long. In Malaysia, women believed the buds would stop internal bleeding and shrink the womb after childbirth. And men thought of them as energy drinks or aphrodisiacs.
The buds’ properties were checked in a laboratory experiment on rats, which showed potential in accelerating healing of wounds, but the research was too preliminary to reach a conclusion.
Beyond medicine, local media reports say, Rafflesia has added value to eco-tourism. The recent discovery in Sumur Kudus has already attracted visitors and prompted local communities to look for any signs of possible sightings.
Conservation challenges
Because Rafflesia are only known to exist along with Tetrastigma, conserving tropical forests and their delicate ecology becomes all the more significant. A Mongabay report says West Sumatra—home to over a dozen types of Rafflesia, including Hasseltii—lost 139,590 hectares of forests in the decade between 2011 and 2021.
Tropical forests in southeast Asia also face pressures from miners and oil palm plantations.
Researchers from BRIN are now working to create the first comprehensive genetic database for all Rafflesia species through the ‘Pan-Phylogeny for Rafflesia’ project, also funded by Oxford University’s Botanic Garden and BRIN’s expedition programme.
The project aims to make policy recommendations for conservation strategies in Indonesia.
For Septian Andriki, who began searching for Rafflesia Hasseltii in 2007, the discovery is more than a scientific achievement. “This is very amazing,” he is heard saying in the clip, moments after witnessing the bloom.