Kate Teltscher

The world’s largest flower is also its ugliest

Known as ‘corpse flower’, the sinister Rafflesia resembles slabs of bloody, white-flecked meat, emits the scent of rotting flesh and eventually subsides into a mass of black slime

Rafflesia, one of the strangest and most gruesome plants on the planet. [Alamy]
  • Comments

  • Pathless Forest: The Quest to Save the World’s Largest Flowers

    Chris Thorogood

    Allen Lane, pp. 288, £25

Already a subscriber? Log in

This article is for subscribers only

Subscribe today to get 3 months' delivery of the magazine, as well as online and app access, for only £3.

There’s no commitment, you can cancel any time.

  • Weekly delivery of the magazine
  • Unlimited access to our website and app
  • Enjoy Spectator newsletters and podcasts
  • Explore our online archive, going back to 1828

Read next

Trending

Julie Burchill

The Met doesn’t care about anti-Semitism

Julie Burchill
We’re familiar by now with the peculiar paradox of left-wingers and feminists, those weird well-born women who would scream blue murder if a white bus driver called them ‘love’, but who are now marching every Saturday in support of Hamas, a supremacist terror group who used sexual assault as a weapon. As dopey as these

Because you read about botany

Also by Kate Teltscher

Latest

Comments

A blooming good offer

Join the conversation with other Spectator readers by getting the next 3 months for £3.

Already a subscriber? Log in