Artwork by Chris Thorogood, originally from the book, Pathless Forest.
WORDS BY SOFIA QUAGLIA
Deep in the jungles of Southeast Asia dwells a parasitic plant so unusual it could have been plucked from a sci-fi film. Putrid scents spew from its thick, warty flowers. Its blossoms are the world’s largest, spanning up to a meter in diameter and 11 kilograms in mass. Hailing from the genus Rafflesia, these botanic beasts have been given the monikers “monster flowers” and “corpse flowers.”
Rafflesia seem hard to miss, but despite their stature and miasma, they have flown under the radar for ages. Few know where to find them. Little is known about their basic biology. And now, the plants are in peril. Of the 42 species of Rafflesia scattered throughout Southeast Asia, all but two are either endangered or critically endangered.
The fight for conservation is steep, especially because Rafflesia remains such an evolutionary enigma, but a motley crew of fearless flower enthusiasts has banded together to save them. This brigade of researchers, conservationists, and community advocates are pinpointing flower coordinates, pursuing scientific discoveries, and perhaps most crucially, persuading others to care.
“We think that it is our responsibility to take care and also to save Rafflesia,” said Krishna Gamawan, a local conservation activist from Sumatra, Indonesia. Gamawan is part of a group called Komunitas Peduli Puspa Langka (KPPL), meaning “community passionate about protecting rare flowers,” which he and his friend Sofian cofounded in 2010. Since he started campaigning for Rafflesia, he said he’s seen populations plummet from 80 blooms to 40 blooms per season in his hometown.
One of KPPL’s key advisors is Agus Susatya, a professor at the Universitas Bengkulu in Indonesia, where the first ever Rafflesia was officially discovered. For the past 20 years, he’s been researching the genus’s taxonomy and ecology in Sumatra. He’s even named three new species. But still, he admits that scientists struggle to grasp even some of the plant’s most basic features. “We call these the black holes of Rafflesia. We really do not know anything about the biology,” he said.
What is known is that Rafflesia is a parasite that makes a living by stealing food from other plants. It spends most of its lifecycle threaded like a tiny tapeworm inside its host’s flesh, invisible from the outside. Researchers still do not know how it innoculates its hosts or how long it spends in hiding. The parasite infects only one group of tropical vines—the grape-relative Tetrastigma—but it’s unclear why it has chosen this plant exclusively. When it’s time to reproduce, the scrounger spurts into a grapefruit-to-soccer-ball-sized bud, depending on the species, and gives life to a large, blood-red flower that blooms for one to five days. It mysteriously has no leaves, no stems, and no roots: just an ungainly, gargantuan flower.
“We think that it is our responsibility to take care and also to save Rafflesia.”
While in bloom, Rafflesia emits a putrescent smell of rotting meat to lure in carrion flies and dupes them into fertilizing it. Each species smells different—botanists don’t know why—and each flower is either female or male and needs to bloom simultaneously with its counterpart to reproduce in the first 24 hours before it starts rotting into the ground. Nobody can predict where, when, and if it’ll bloom again after that. Some think ants carry the seeds around, others posit it’s underground termites.
“Our challenge is to discover and reveal these kinds of mysteries,” said Susatya.
These qualms shrouding Rafflesia have made it challenging for conservationists to bolster their population in the wild, or collect and grow the flowers in research facilities. Botanists at Bogor Botanical Garden in Indonesia have been the only ones to succeed so far. They use a method called vine grafting, where they snip a tiny bit of infected Tetrastigma root, stuff it into an incision into a larger, healthy vine, and wrap it up for a couple of weeks. It’s a delicate process: It must be the right corner of the jungle, the right size of vine and root, the weather must be right, and it must be morning when the grafting takes place.
“Sometimes it also depends on our luck,” said Dian Latifah, a conservation researcher at the Indonesian Institute of Sciences who was trained by the two only experts in the technique, horticulturists Sofi Mursidawati and Ngatari. The pair have even managed to plant Rafflesia from its seeds, an unheard-of feat. “The cold hand of Mr. Ngatari is better, it’s like a talent maybe,” said Latifah.
Last year, another expert team tried to replicate this work on the Filipino island of Luzon. Led by botanists Chris Thorogood from Oxford Botanic Garden in the United Kingdom and Pastor Malabrigo from the University of the Philippines Los Baños, they performed two grafts and checked back on them this year. One of the host vines died, the Rafflesia rotting away with it, Thorogood said. But the other looks healthy so far. It’ll be three years before flowers emerge. “I think everyone’s very optimistic,” said Thorogood, who recounted the adventure in his latest book, Pathless Forest.
Thorogood and Malabrigo have traveled far and wide across the Philippines in their research. They waded rivers, climbed mountains, and trekked through jungles filled with giant fungi, fluorescent plants, and venomous snakes. They document everywhere they’ve seen Rafflesia, collecting everything from scent molecules to noninvasive DNA samples. The archipelago boasts at least 15 species of Rafflesia, making it the center of biodiversity for the genus. But even still, finding the flowers has become even more challenging as the agriculture, timber, and palm oil industries denude the nation’s forests.
“If we don’t even know it’s there, then it can just tiptoe into extinction locally, and no one would ever know,” said Thorogood. “I think that must have happened a lot even in our lifetimes.”
“If we don’t even know it’s there, then it can just tiptoe into extinction locally, and no one would ever know.”
Because many of these species have small populations and are endemic just to one island, most Filipinos don’t know they’re there. “The first question I ask to local guides is always ‘Have you seen this flower?’” said Malabrigo, pointing to the drawing on his Rafflesia-themed shirt, which he wears on all field tours. Most people who aren’t experts in the field often ask, “We have that in the Philippines?”
Thorogood and Malabrigo recalled one bean farmer they met on Mount Banahawwho had unwittingly cut the small endemic Rafflesia population in half to make space for his crops because he just didn’t know what the flower was. The pair of scientists managed to get the authorities to assign him a new patch of land for harvest and trained him to set up a small ecotourism initiative, where people could come see his patch of Rafflesia as a remunerating attraction.
It’s this type of profitable framework that boosts local engagement that will make all the difference in whether Rafflesia persists or plummets into extinction, said Malabrigo. Eventually, they hope that the flower becomes an icon of conservation, in the same way that the panda and other flagship animals are.
“It’s a bit too late nowadays, but we’re still hopeful because now there are more people getting more interested in these plants,” said Malabrigo.
In some ways, they envision for the Philippines what Gamawan and colleagues have already pulled off in Sumatra. While school uniforms and local shops in Sumatra often boast the blossom as their logo, few people had actually seen the flower in the flesh. Now thanks to Gamawan and other leaders of KPPL who regularly gather locals for informal expeditions to search for the flower, that number is rising.
As KPPL approaches its 15th year, it has become a social media sensation. The group alerts followers when flowers will bloom, hosts exhibitions and events, organizes petitions for local and international legislation, and personally visits local farmers to teach them how to safeguard the plant while monetizing it for ecotourism. Gamawan thinks that if this sort of approach was scaled up across Rafflesia’s range, the flower might get a better shot at survival.
“This very special flower is on your doorstep, in your own backyard,” he said. “You need to take care of it.”
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