#stinking corpse flower

[mold-wizard]

When you think about it, the name "stinking corpse flower" is kind of judgey.

[microcosme11]

1818 Sumatra: Discovery of the world’s largest flower, the “stinking corpse lily”

I was looking at Stamford Raffles’ visit to St. Helena when I came across another person out of the woodwork. Dr. Joseph Arnold, who was part of Raffles’ group, died of fever in Sumatra at age 36. He had recently been alerted by a servant to a bizarre flower. It is now known as Rafflesia arnoldii. The reason I bring it up is that Dr. Joseph Arnold was very strange himself. He wrote a stream-of-consciousness journal, novel, or something, that is quite haunting. 

XV. An Account of a new Genus of Plants, named Rafflesia.

By Robert Brown, Esq. F.R.S. Libr. L.S. Read, June 30, 1820. It is now nearly eighteen months since some account of a Flower of extraordinary size was received by my lamented friend and patron the late revered President of the Royal Society, from Sir Stamford Raffles, Governor of the East India Company's establishments in Sumatra. This gigantic Flower, which forms the subject of the present communication, was discovered in 1818 on Sir Stamford's first journey from Bencoolen into the interior. In that journey he was accompanied by a naturalist of great zeal and acquirements, the late Dr. Joseph Arnold, a member of this Society, from whose researches, aided by the friendship and influence of the Governor, in an island so favourably situated and so imperfectly explored as Sumatra, the greatest expectations had been formed. But these expectations were never to be realized: for the same letter which gave the account of the gigantic Flower, brought also the intelligence of Dr. Arnold's death. As in this letter many important particulars are stated respecting the plant which I am about to describe, and a just tribute is paid to the merits of the naturalist by whom it was discovered, I shall introduce my account by the following extract. " Bencoolen, 13th August, 1818. "You will lament to hear that we have lost Dr. Arnold: he fell a sacrifice to his exertions on my first tour into the interior, and died of fever about a fortnight ago.

"It is impossible I can do justice to his memory by any feeble encomiums I may pass on his character ; he was in every thing what he should have been, devoted to science and the acquisition of knowledge, and aiming only at usefulness.

"I had hoped, instead of the melancholy event I have now to communicate, that we should have been able to send you an account of our many interesting discoveries from the hand of Dr. Arnold. At the period of his death he had not done much; all was arrangement for extensive acquirement in every branch of natural history. I shall go on with the collections as well as I can, and hereafter communicate with you respecting them, and in the mean time content myself with giving you the best account I can of the largest and most magnificent Flower which, as far as we know, has yet been described. Fortunately I have found part of a letter from poor Arnold to some unknown friend, written while he was on board ship, and a short time before his death, from which the following is an extract. " 'But here I rejoice to tell you I happened to meet with what I consider as the greatest prodigy of the vegetable world. I had ventured some way from the party, when one of the Malay servants came running to me with wonder in his eyes, and said, " Come with me, Sir, come! a flower, very large, beautiful, wonderful! " I immediately went with the man about a hundred yards in the jungle, and he pointed to a flower growing close to the ground under the bushes, which was truly astonishing. My first impulse was to cut it up and carry it to the hut.’ [long description follows]

"Dr. Arnold did not live to return to Bencoolen, nor to fulfil the intentions expressed in the above extract; but we have finished the drawing of the whole flower, and it is now forwarded under charge of Dr. Horsfield, to whom I have also intrusted the pistil and buds. https://www.biodiversitylibrary.org/item/13692#page/224/mode/1up