Giant Padma flower

**Giant Padma flower** is a Limited edition stamp in SLOWLY. This can be unlocked when you visit Indonesia during this special day .

## Information

***Rafflesia arnoldii***, the **corpse flower**, or **giant padma**, is a species of flowering plant in the parasitic genus *Rafflesia*. It is noted for producing the largest individual flower on Earth. It has a strong and unpleasant odor of decaying flesh. It is native to the rainforests of Sumatra and Borneo. Although there are some plants with larger flowering organs like the titan arum (*Amorphophallus titanum*) and talipot palm (*Corypha umbraculifera*), those are technically clusters of many flowers.

*Rafflesia arnoldii* is one of the three national flowers in Indonesia, the other two being the white jasmine (*Jasminum sambac*) and moon orchid (*Phalaenopsis amabilis*). It was officially recognized as a national "rare flower" (Indonesian: *puspa langka*) in Presidential Decree No. 4 in 1993.

The first European to find *Rafflesia* was the ill-fated French explorer Louis Auguste Deschamps. He was a member of a French scientific expedition to Asia and the Pacific, detained by the Dutch for three years on the Indonesian island of Java, where, in 1797, he collected a specimen, which was probably what is now known as *R. patma*. During the return voyage in 1798, his ship was taken by the British, with whom France was at war, and all his papers and notes were confiscated. Joseph Banks is said to have agitated for the return of the stolen documents, but apparently to no avail: they were lost, turned up for sale around 1860, went to the British Museum of Natural History, where they were promptly lost again. They did not see the light of day until 1954, when they were rediscovered at the Museum. To everyone's surprise, his notes and drawings indicate that he had found and studied the plants long before the British. It is thought quite possible the British purposely hid Deschamps' notes, to claim the 'glory' of 'discovery' for themselves.

In 1818 the British surgeon Joseph Arnold collected a specimen of another *Rafflesia* species found by a Malay servant in a part of Sumatra, then a British colony called British Bencoolen (now Bengkulu), during an expedition run by the recently appointed Lieutenant-Governor of Bencoolen, Stamford Raffles. Arnold contracted a fever and died soon after the discovery, the preserved material being sent to Banks. Banks passed on the materials, and the honour to study them was given to Robert Brown. The British Museum's resident botanical artist Franz Bauer was commissioned to make illustrations of the new plants. Brown eventually gave a speech before the June 1820 meeting of the Linnean Society of London, where he first introduced the genus and its until then two species. Brown gave the generic name *Rafflesia* in honour of Raffles. Bauer completed his pictures some time in mid-1821, but the actual article on the subject continued to languish.

William Jack, Arnold's successor in the Sumatran Bencoolen colony, recollected the plant and was the first to officially describe the new species under the name *R. titan* in 1820. It is thought quite likely that Jack rushed the name to publication because he feared that the French might publish what they knew of the species, and thus rob the British of potential 'glory'. Apparently aware of Jack's work, Brown finally had the article published in the *Transactions of the Linnean Society* a year later, formally introducing the name *R. arnoldii* (he ignores Jack's work in his article).

Text and image from Wikipedia.

## Method

This stamp is unlocked by logging into your account while inside the country during this special day. Any other local stamps will also be unlocked at the same time.

You will keep it and be able to send to other penpals even after you return from your trip.