ZAP’S FACTS!
FLOWERS

The world's biggest flower can be wider than a car tyre - and smells like rotting meat.

Rafflesia has no leaves, no stem and no roots. It steals everything from another plant and just blooms.

2 min read
The world's biggest flower can be wider than a car tyre - and smells like rotting meat.
THE FULL STORY

Rafflesia arnoldii holds the record for the largest single flower on Earth. A bloom can stretch over a metre across - roughly the size of a car tyre - with thick reddish-orange petals covered in white warts. It only grows in the rainforests of Sumatra and Borneo.

Here’s the weird part: rafflesia has no leaves, no stem and no roots. It spends most of its life living as thread-like cells deep inside the wood of a particular jungle vine, basically stealing all its water and food. Only when it’s ready to reproduce does it burst out and bloom.

And then it smells. Really, really bad. Like a dead animal that’s been left in the sun for a week. That’s on purpose - the stink lures in carrion flies, which crawl around inside the flower and accidentally carry pollen from one bloom to the next.

Some flowers smell like rotting meat on purpose - to trick flies into pollinating them.
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A hibiscus flower opens at dawn - and is dead by sunset.
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