Rafflesia kerrii, Corpse Without Stink

Rafflesia kerrii, Lojing Highland, Kelatan, Malaysia.

Rafflesia, generally also known as corpse flower which got this nick due to its rotting meat or corpse smell.

However, a little surprise as my first personal experience revealed, there wasn't any smell at all. May be it is just this specific species, the Rafflesia kerrii of Lojing Highland, Kelatan, Malaysia.

It has got no true roots, leaves, stems. It is an endoparasite of a type of vine in genus tetrastigma (vitaceae).

See the bending plant that climbing its way up the tree on the foreground? This is the vine, host to the Rafflesia.

Let's look at various stages of the flower development.

Fresh and smaller bud "germinate" from the Forest floor.

Getting slightly bigger.....

.....and bigger.....

......and even bigger....... See the rapid growing of internal layers that force open the outer layers.

At the later stage, the real petals enlarged and matured to expose itself.

And one by one the petals open up. In this picture below, two petals have fully opened while the other three are half opened.

Finally, a full bloom. I don't smell anything, but it attracts insects and flies.

Let's get closer and closer on the flower.

And let's see the ending.