page_title: Rafflesia
section_title: Classification
hierarchical_section_title: Rafflesia / Classification
caption_attribution_description: Rafflesia pricei near Mount Kinabalu, Sabah, Malaysia.
context_page_description: Rafflesia is a genus of parasitic flowering plants in the family Rafflesiaceae. It contains approximately 28 species, all found in Southeast Asia, mainly in Indonesia, Malaysia, Thailand and the Philippines. To Western Europe, it was first discovered by French surgeon and naturalist Louis Deschamps in Java between 1791 and 1794, but his notes and illustrations, seized by the British in 1803, were not available to western science until 1861. It was later found in the Indonesian rainforest in Bengkulu, Sumatra by an Indonesian guide working for Joseph Arnold in 1818, and named after Sir Stamford Raffles, the leader of the expedition.
context_section_description: Comparison of mitochondrial DNA (mtDNA) sequences of Rafflesia with other angiosperm mtDNA indicated this parasite evolved from photosynthetic plants of the order Malpighiales. Another study from that same year confirmed this result using both mtDNA and nuclear DNA sequences, and showed the three other groups traditionally classified in Rafflesiaceae were unrelated. A more recent study more specifically found Rafflesia and its relatives to be embedded within the family Euphorbiaceae, which is surprising, as members of that family typically have very small flowers. According to their analysis, the rate of flower size evolution was more or less constant throughout the family except at the origin of Rafflesiaceae, where the flowers rapidly evolved to become much larger before reverting to the slower rate of change.
caption: Three Rafflesia pricei growing in close proximity near Mount Kinabalu, Sabah, Malaysia
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