Rafflesia Park where the flowers are numbered and monitored by the park rangers. "Rafflesia" are also remarkable for showing a large horizontal transfer of genes from their host plants. This is well known among bacteria, but not higher organisms. The name "corpse flower" applied to "Rafflesia" can be confusing because this common name also refers to the titan arum ("Amorphophallus titanum") of the family Araceae. Moreover, because "Amorphophallus" has the world's largest unbranched inflorescence, it is sometimes mistakenly credited as having the world's largest flower. Both "Rafflesia" and "Amorphophallus" are flowering plants, but they are only distantly related. "Rafflesia arnoldii" has
Rafflesia arnoldii British, with whom France was at war, and all his papers and notes were confiscated. They did not see the light of day until 1954, when they were rediscovered in the Natural History Museum, London. The British botanist Joseph Arnold (1782-1818) and the statesman Sir Stamford Raffles (1781-1826, founder of modern Singapore) collected a specimen of another "Rafflesia" species found by a Malay servant in Sumatra (Bengkulu) in 1818. Arnold contracted a fever and died soon after the discovery. Lady Raffles, who had also been present when the specimen was collected, finished the colour drawing that Arnold had started of