BROOM-RAPES, BALANOPHOREE, RAFFLESIACEH. 203 
are only as large as a walnut and give searcely any indication of their future 
magnitude; but they gradually increase in size, and before opening are curiously 
like a cabbage. Up to this time the bracts still inclose the flower proper, and 
to them is due the above-mentioned resemblance. They now open back, and 
the flower, which, to the last, grows rapidly, unfolds and displays five immense 
lobes around a central bowl or cup-shaped portion. The form of the giant-flower 
when open is best likened to that of a forget-me-not blossom. The semicircular 
outline of the lobes, at least, is similar, and the very short throat of the flower also 
exhibits a distant resemblance. At the part where the bowl-shaped centre, which 
Fig. 45,—Raflesia Padma, parasitic on roots upon the surface of the ground. 
has the stamens and styles inserted in it, passes into the lobes there is a thick, 
fleshy ring like a corona. The upper surface of the lobes is covered with numbers 
of papille. The lobes themselves, the hollow central bowl, and the ring, are all 
fleshy, and the flower, as a whole, emits an unpleasant putrescent smell. This 
floral prodigy was first discovered in the year 1818 in the interior of Sumatra at 
Pulo Lebbas on the river Manna, where it occurs parasitic on the roots of wild 
vines in places where the ground is strewn with the dung of elephants. It has 
never yet been seen anywhere outside Sumatra. Four other Rafflesie have, 
however, been discovered, but all in the islands of the Indian Ocean—Java, Borneo, 
and the Philippines. In mode of growth, as also in the form of the flowers, they 
resemble the species above described, but their flowers are rather smaller. 
Rafflesia Padma, which occurs in Java, and is represented in fig. 45, possesses 
flowers with a diameter of half a meter. The hollow, somewhat ventricose centre 
and the ring bordering the floral receptacle are in this Raflesia of a dirty 
