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Endangered Animals
Endangered Plants
Global Warming

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Consequences: Endangered Plants

In this section, we will only be highlighting one plant, the Rafflesia Arnoldii flower, which is the world most endangered tropical plant and is found only in Malaysia and Indonesia.

Rafflesia Flower

Nothing illustrates the other-worldliness of the tropical forest more dramatically than Indonesia's Rafflesia flower. Found in shady lowland tropical forests, the Rafflesia is a celebrated botanical curiosity. Almost 1 meter wide and weighing about 9 kilograms, it is by far the largest bloom in the world, besides being one of the rarest and most endangered.

The flower is an excellent example of how fragile some components of the tropical forest are, for its very survival is totally dependent on one particular vine called Tetrastigma, related to the grapevine. The Rafflesia is a disembodied flower. A rootless, leafless and stemless parasite, it drains nourishment and gains physical support from its host vine. Its only body outside the flower consists of strands of fungus-like tissue that grow inside the Tetrastigma vine. It first manifests itself as a tiny bud on the vine's roots or stem. But over a period of 12 months, it swells to a cabbage-like head that bursts around midnight under the cover of a rainy night to reveal this startling, lurid-red flower.

Inside the cauldron-like cup is a spiked disk. And attached to its underside are either stigmas or stamens, depending upon whether the plant is male or female. By now you've probably noticed the characteristic rotting-meat smell that gives the plant its local name: "corpse flower." The odor attracts carrion-scavenging flies and beetles into the plant to pollinate it. But the full-grown flower lasts only about a week before it dies, so seeing one up close like this is lucky indeed.

The Rafflesia Flower