Rafflesia Hunting in Gading

My labmate Wen Ni went to Gading National Park last Saturday and saw full bloom Rafflesia. She told me she saw a baby bud which would bloom in few days time, so I decided to not miss the chance and paid a visit there today with my siblings and cousins to try our luck. The Rafflesia is world's largest flower which is rare and fairly hard to locate because it grows at altitudes of between 500 and 700 meters in the rainforests of Borneo. The continuously warm and high humidity climate make it suitable for its growth. It is difficult to see in bloom as the bud takes up to 10 months to develop and the blossom lasts only for 7 days.

A 45 minutes (or more) drive from Kuching took us to the national park. After registering and paying for entrance tickets (RM10 par, RM5 for senior citizen, diabled people and student, group fare available too), we began tracking down the Rafflesia trail to hunt for the giant flowers. Although the forestry officer at the entrance told us that the Rafflesia is already 'buruk' (means rotten in Malay language) and we were so disappointed, we still decided to go on to see the 'corpse' of the flower since we already came all the way from Kuching.

Along the trail...

It's a little slippery along the trail because it was raining yesterday night and early this morning.

Can you see a tiny frog on the handle of the track? Right in the middle. Not bigger than 2cm in length I bet.

Some flora along the way

A giant millipede or centipede?

We met a European couple and a group of school kids along the way. We asked for directions to get to the rotten Rafflesia. But when we completed the track, we still couldn't locate any sign of Rafflessia corpse. Finally a worker we met nearby told us we need to walk back 5 minutes from where we ended and turned left into another track which we saw earlier on but did not walk in. And....

At last. We saw her!

The Rafflesia Flower 6 days old

It has no stem (at least I don't see one if there is) and is growing on a ratan tree (it's a parasite).

The flower diameter is bigger than both my hands

Further up close

A Darrion fly in the middle. It's the agent for pollination.

The inner part of the flower

The petals with rough surface

The 3 happy Borneo primates who first seen Rafflesia for real.

Know a little more about Rafflesia~
Rafflesia is a genus of parasitic flowering plants. It was discovered in the Indonesian rain forest by an Indonesian guide working for Dr. Joseph Arnold in 1818, and named after Sir Thomas Stamford Raffles, the leader of the expedition. It contains approximately 27 species (including four incompletely characterized species as recognized by Meijer 1997), all found in southeastern Asia, on the Malay Peninsula, Borneo, Sumatra, and the Philippines.
The plant has no stems, leaves or true roots. It is an endoparasite of vines in the genus Tetrastigma (Vitaceae), spreading its root-like haustoria inside the tissue of the vine. The only part of the plant that can be seen outside the host vine is the five-petaled 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 the smallest species, R. manillana, has 20 cm diameter flowers. The flowers look and smell like rotting flesh, hence its local names which translate to "corpse flower" or "meat flower" (but see below). The vile smell that the flower gives off attracts insects such as flies and carrion beetles, which transport pollen from male to female flowers. Little is known about seed dispersal. However, tree shrews and other forest mammals apparently eat the fruits and disperse the seeds. Rafflesia is an official state flower of Indonesia, also Sabah state in Malaysia, as well as for the Surat Thani Province, Thailand. (Taken from Wikipedia)