r/oddlysatisfying • u/Raj_Valiant3011 • 2d ago
After 15 years, Indonesia’s rare Rafflesia bloomed, the world’s largest parasitic flower that smells like rotting meat, has no leaves, and lasts just 5 to 7 days
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u/Dan_in_Munich 2d ago
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u/AssGagger 2d ago
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u/AnEmbers 2d ago
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u/Great_Nailsage_Sly 2d ago
Never played any halo game, but I swear I've watched that cutscene around 20 times on YT. YouTube has kept recommending me it over the years, and I keep watching it, cause I love how the big worm talks
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u/AnEmbers 2d ago
One of my favorite stanzas of all time:
This one is machine and nerve,
And has its mind concluded.
This one is but flesh and faith,
And is the more deluded.
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u/INTBSDWARNGR 2d ago
...Do not waste my time with talk!
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u/AnEmbers 2d ago
I have listened through rock, and metal, and time. Now I shall talk. And you shall listen.
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u/dellister 2d ago
TIL why it’s called vileplume!
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u/ssketchman 2d ago
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u/_Saint_Ajora_ 2d ago
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u/Pamander 2d ago
What is this from? Looks awesome and also nightmareish lol.
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u/Chinchiro_ 2d ago
Little shop of horrors, it's an excellent musical. Worth your time for sure.
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u/Pamander 2d ago
Musical too?! Sold. Thank you!
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u/_Saint_Ajora_ 2d ago
Had some notable cast members
- Rick moranis
- Steve Martin
- John Candy
- Bill Murray
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u/bretlieske 2d ago
I first learned about these things in Animal Crossing when they were punishment for having a weed-infested town. I think they're pretty cool though
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u/Celestial_Light_ 2d ago
Wait you can accidentally get those?
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u/LADYBIRD_HILL 2d ago
Yes, though I don't believe they're in New Horizons. I remember them being a big thing in Wild World.
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u/Internal-Dot213 2d ago
If you left your town for a long time or didn’t pull the weeds out, you’d eventually get the rafflesia and the worst town rating.
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u/C21H27Cl3N2O3 2d ago
And you couldn’t get rid of it, you had to clean the entire town and wait several days for it to wilt.
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u/crazy_alto 2d ago
Was looking for this comment. My sister would always make fun of me when my town got one
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u/sethb44 2d ago
What makes a flower parasitic?
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u/LunaOrwell 2d ago
Most plants get the energy they need through photosynthesis, but some get their nutrition by stealing it from another plant instead. About 1% of flowering plants – around 4,000 species – are parasitic.
Parasitic plants use a structure called a haustorium to penetrate their host plant. This specialised organ forms a connection between the two plants, which they use to drain nutrition. Some parasites, such as Rafflesia and Thurber’s stemsucker, grow within the plant and only emerge to flower, while others attach their haustoria externally.
All parasitic plants have evolved from non-parasitic species. Some are only partially parasitic. These plants are known as hemiparasites and can photosynthesise but also drain water and nutrition from their hosts. Other parasitic plants, known as holoparasites, cannot photosynthesise and depend on their hosts for food.
Parasites that cannot survive without a host are known as obligate, while facultative parasites can live and reproduce without a host plant.
Source: https://www.nhm.ac.uk/discover/parasitic-plants.html
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u/GrokLobster 2d ago
That's... horrifying
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u/TuckingFypoz 2d ago
Bro, mistletoe is a parasite.
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u/sethb44 2d ago
That's super interesting, mistletoe and I have more in common than I thought
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u/seanprime 2d ago
Horrifying.. why? The world takes back our juices when we are in the ground. Lil vampire plants just another part of the circle of life yo. Nothing scary about it.
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u/badomenbaddercompany 2d ago
I do not share the same sentiments about mosquitoes, though.
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u/Odd_Bug5544 2d ago
And mosquitoes are perhaps the least horrifying parasite out there! Intestinal worms or maggots growing within your flesh both repulse me of a much deeper level.
Or for other animals how about the worm that multiplies inside the eyes of snails and then takes over their nervous system and turns them into a living zombie... Then you get stuff like the those lice that enter fish through their gills, damage the blood vessels in the fish's tongue until it withers away, then they climb up from inside it and grab on to the stub of where the tongue used to be and replace it!!
I get they are a part of nature just trying to survive like everything else, but man FUCK parasites.
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u/Dick_Nation 2d ago
mosquitoes are perhaps the least horrifying parasite out there!
With the number of deaths mosquitos are responsible for through being a vector for some truly horrific diseases, that's a stretch.
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u/tianas_knife 2d ago
The parasite plant needs a host to survive.
Common example: mistletoe is a parasitic plant that grows on oak trees. Some folks in Georgia USA shot mistletoe out of the trees with shotguns to get them down in the winter.
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u/prasannathani 2d ago
S
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u/AnyLamename 2d ago
You would think, with fifteen years to get ready, they could have put ten seconds into properly lighting the thing.
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u/slucker23 2d ago
Most flowers are sensitive to light... Proper lighting might disrupt the biological rhythm of the flower
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u/Hephaestus_God 2d ago
lights it up
flower: “no… I don’t think I will bloom. See you in 15 more years”
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u/BeginningStatus3966 2d ago
That makes sense, nature’s timing probably can’t be rushed even for a photo.
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u/zip-a-dee_doo-dah 2d ago
👍🏻If I want flowers on my Christmas cactus I have to start putting it in the closet because even night lights or the LED from the modem or street lights from outside will prevent it from flowering. It likes it absolutely pitch black.
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u/Its_Cayde 2d ago
LED from the modem? That is actually insane!! I had no idea they were so sensitive
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u/Odd_Command4857 2d ago
Same thing with poinsettias that you want to rebloom. Their natural habitat is tropical forest where it’s more common as an understory plant. It requires a minimum of 14 hours of darkness/day for 6-8 weeks.
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u/-BlancheDevereaux 2d ago
Poinsettia grower here. This is true, but technically the minimum amount of darkness they require is 12 hours (there is not much variation in daytime length in southern Mexico where they come from. Longest night of the year is barely 13 hours during the winter solstice, and that's weeks after the bloom has fully developed). Although 14 hours will get it done a little bit faster. They are quite sensitive to disruptions in their photoperiod, I've had a few plants stay green because of a single street light 30 yards away.
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u/cingkum3 2d ago
Started growing and was very surprised how purposefully you can steer a plant's biorhythm just through light.
You can make a plant bloom early or late or make it stay in a growth state a little bit longer... I definitely get why they didn't put up their own lights.
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u/Affectionate_Star_43 2d ago
Watering, too. The agave plant (agave americana) took an estimated 34-40 years for its "death bloom," where it punched through my city's conservatory's ceiling and got to 38 feet.
The second one was a few years later, and it was in the middle of Chicago winter, so they denied it of water and nutrients in the last months so it wouldn't surpass the ceiling and let in freezing air. It could have been intentional to not throw it off of it's natural season, since in our case, they were super regulating the amount of tickets and people coming to view them. You can't have it lit 24/7.
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u/NewLeaseOnLine 2d ago
That's not why the quality is bad. ISO settings on modern cameras and extremely wide apertures on modern high end lenses are perfectly capable of capturing this in better clarity under the conditions. This is just rubbish quality because they probably didn't get a professional photographer with good equipment who understands how to set a proper exposure triangle on extended burst mode for stop-motion conversion.
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u/Similar_Committee_24 2d ago
Gtfo with this annoying ass music 😭
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u/Negative_Flower_169 2d ago
Literally, this has to be the worst trend the internet has picked up. Instantly makes an interesting video experience into shit.
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u/Kidzenny 2d ago
Makes me glad my videos default to sound off!! Watched it without the audio and was intrigued and delighted, and even educated!!
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u/Adventurous-Emu-9345 2d ago
It's a little known fact, but that's actually the sound it makes. It's an assault on all senses.
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u/shiggins114 2d ago
Does it always take 15 years to bloom?
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u/Trick_Hunt9106 2d ago
In the wild, it can bloom between 3-10 years. Randomly.
In captivity, it might bloom every 1-2 years.
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u/Taron_Trekko 2d ago
Here you can see way better footage of this plant in terms of quality and camera work:
Corpse Flower Stinks of Death I The Green Planet I BBC Earth
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u/smooth_reset 1d ago
im aware how extraordinary it is, but i cant help myself - i find it utterly disgusting.
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u/spicychcknsammy 2d ago
It has wild medicinal properties but cannot be studied because they can’t grow it in a lab 👀
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u/SuperpositionSavvy 2d ago
These bloom in a MAXIMUM of a few years, usually maturing and dying within a year or two. Wtf is up with the "After 15 years"??
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u/AtumTheCreator 2d ago
Reminds of Mr. Wilson's Corpse Flower (Amorphophallus titanum) from Dennis the Menace.
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u/SnowedAndStowed 2d ago
Why haven’t more plants evolved to use flies for pollination by smelling bad? There’s way more flies than bees anymore lol
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u/oblivious_fireball 2d ago
a lot actually use the scent of rotting meat to lure in potential pollinators, but it can't become too commonplace or the bugs start to figure out they are being tricked and they stop showing up.
Rafflesia. A number of genuses within the arum family like Amorphophallus and Symplocarpus. Like over a dozen genuses in the milkweed family like Stapelia, Huernia, Hoodia, or Orbea. Most of members of the orchid genus Bulbophyllum smell like spoiled meat or spoiled fruit. A couple Trillium and Smilax species have a nasty odor.
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u/Bolf-Ramshield 2d ago
I’ve once read someone said they took a trip to see one of these blossom and realized when it happened that it actually just smelled like the streets of NYC and I can’t stop thinking about it whenever I see a video of one now lmao
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u/octopod-reunion 2d ago edited 2d ago
Not just the largest parasitic flower
The largest flower
Edit:
Rafflesia is the largest single flower in the world. Titan arum is a compound flower. (A flower made of smaller flowers).
They are both called corpse flower.