''Rafflesia hasseltii'' is a

parasitic plant A parasitic plant is a plant that derives some or all of its nutritional requirements from another living plant. They make up about 1% of angiosperms and are found in almost every biome. All parasitic plants develop a specialized organ called the ...

species of the genus ''

Rafflesia ''Rafflesia'' () is a genus of parasitic flowering plants in the family Rafflesiaceae. The species have enormous flowers, the buds rising from the ground or directly from the lower stems of their host plants; one species has the largest flowers i ...

''. It can be found in

Kerinci Seblat National Park Kerinci Seblat National Park is the largest national park on the island of Sumatra, Indonesia. It has a total area of 13,791 km2, and spans four provinces: West Sumatra, Jambi, Bengkulu, and South Sumatra. Geography It is located between 1 ...

Sumatra Sumatra is one of the Sunda Islands of western Indonesia. It is the largest island that is fully within Indonesian territory, as well as the sixth-largest island in the world at 473,481 km2 (182,812 mi.2), not including adjacent i ...

Indonesia Indonesia, officially the Republic of Indonesia, is a country in Southeast Asia and Oceania between the Indian and Pacific oceans. It consists of over 17,000 islands, including Sumatra, Java, Sulawesi, and parts of Borneo and New Guine ...

Uses

Traditional tribes such as the Orang Asli sell the flowers as a folk medicine. Researchers in Malaysia slashed a group of 36 rats and smeared either the powdered flower mashed into a hydrogel paste (at two concentrations), a commercial hydrogel for wounds, or a placebo on the wounds. They conclude that wounds of the surviving rats smeared with the flower or hydrogel looked to them as if they had healed nicer than those of the placebo rats, although there was no significant difference between flower concentrations or commercial hydrogel.

References

Naturalis Biodiversity Center - L.2096111 - Rafflesia hasseltii Suringar - Artwork.jpeg, ''Rafflesia hasseltii'', collection

Pieter Willem Korthals Pieter Willem Korthals (September 1, 1807, Amsterdam – March 1892, Haarlem) was a Dutch botanist. Korthals was the official botanist with the Dutch East India Service from 1831 to 1836. Among his many discoveries was the medicinal plant Krat ...

, Naturalis Naturalis Biodiversity Center - L.2096113 - Rafflesia hasseltii Suringar - Artwork.jpeg, ''Rafflesia hasseltii'', collection

, Naturalis hasseltii Endemic flora of Sumatra {{Malpighiales-stub