No joke. This thing is known as the corpse flower and is also the largest known flower in the world.
In Borneo, I made it my mission to find one of these things. It was nearly my whole purpose of going to Borneo (though lo-and-behold, Borneo turned out to be my favorite part of the trip). >Rafflesia are flowers that are red to maroon in nature with many white or cream colored freckles and spots all over. Theyare more of a recent discovery by a scientist and his team of university researchers. What attracted them first to this flower, well it can't have been its smell. But I am certain that was a key player in its discovery. These flowers have no real root system, no stems, no leaves, no predictable blooming cycles and pretty much grow where they please. So you can see the difficulty in finding them. Their buds (these little tortoiseshell looking things) last for months at a time before unfolding into the glory that is rafflesia, which will then only last a few days (about 5) before withering away. When they wither, they turn black and disintegrate and form even more of a crater-like appearance; it really looks like someone set fire to it. What a strange life.
Their texture is a hard spongy, almost plastic-y feeling. Almost like a harder, more tough version of a mushroom. They will have 4 to 5 petals and a large crater in the center with what I can only assume is their pollen and stama inside. And as I said they are the biggest flowers in the world, they are somewhere between 20 to 100 centimeters. It depends on the species. The one I found was somewhere more than 30 but I think it was under 40...or maybe 45. And where they are actually renowned for their smell, the ones I found had no scent. Which was amusing seeing as my travel companion kept claiming how he could smell them from the start (he kept saying how close we must be since his nose was so good. we had to walk 3 kilometers and they had no scent! hah!).
So seeing their unpredictable and ellusive nature, where to find them right?
There are actually centers for them. No, they cannot grow them. But they study their habitats and their favored growth environments and have made a center around it. I don't know what you are thinking, but I was thinking something like a natural terrain green house. How very wrong I was. The center is no more than a building with some interesting facts and photos as well as original wood productions from Borneo natives. But you have to pay the center to be able to take a tour. It turned out you had to pay them quite a bit too! I want to say like 50 dollars to enter. And they were trying to ask 100 from us at the start and we just didnt have that much money. And these were not the ususal scam prices. They were set prices. The reason they offered us a cut in the price was probably one they felt sorry for us, two, they realized they were NOT going to get our business for that price ( we really didn't have the money), and most importantly, they told us the only flower in bloom was already withering. The reason you have to pay so much in the first place is that you need a tour guide. And the moment you think you don't, just don't even go.
We set out on the trail, which was concrete at first with stairs and slopes, but at some point, perhaps a kilometer or a kilometer and a half along, out guide starts off into the wild. You didnt think these flowers would grow around a concrete walk did you? Of course not! Then they wouldn't be anywhere near as elusive and everyone could see them! Well we hike down the mountain at a very interesting angle. And then back up portions of it. Each time he points out areas where there are buds of flowers. These little collections of tortoise shells. They have them labeled, plot 72, plot 63, plot 121. They don't grow them here, merely observe them and note what stage they are in so as to note where to take their visitors when they come looking to see one of these beauties in bloom. We walked all over as he searched the plots to make us happy. At the start of the trail, we had the luck of meeting the only other visitor that the location had for the day and what luck we had then. He told us there was one in bloom. At the perfect time too! Day 3 of its 5 day blooming cycle. His guide told our guide what plot it was. However that plot seemed to have either been forgotten or not often viewed for how much hiking we had to do to find it. Climbing over trees, vertical slopes, scaling using vines, and all throughout the leech infested forest. But that is a story for next week. We finally find it near a fallen tree and a good 5 feet down an 80 degree slope. We jump down and brace ourselves against the trees and take our pictures, and our sniffs, and our feels all in. Seriously, this flower might have been feeling a little violated after we were done with it. Our flower was bigger than my face and scentless. Meanwhile our guide took a smoke break.
The way back was not so easy as our way there. We had to hike mostly up the mountain and if we were without a guide...well for one, we would never have found the flower, and secondly, we would surely have never have found our way back. We had to scale back up all the ground we descended, which was extraordinarily mountainous and hike all the way back to the trail, for which we actually took a different (and less taxing as our guide informed us) route and finally made it back to the concrete path.
Getting to and from this center.
You can take a taxi there from the Kinabalu 'bus' terminal. This taxi is essentially a bus, as there are other people in it too, but again there are no regular times for it. The price was also the same as the buses (15 ringit). Getting back though. We had to ask the center to call us a taxi (which again was full of people) to take us back to the city, which was no problem. But we had to wait an hour for it to come (probably they were trying to fill out all their seats). ugh.
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