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Rafflesia: The World's Hardest Plant to Grow · Hydroponics Daily

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  Hello there and welcome back to
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  Hydroponics Daily, your go-to podcast for everything soilless cultivation.
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  I'm your host, Dr. Russell Sharp, and today we're talking about the most difficult
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  plant in the world to grow, whether that's hydroponically or in soil.
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  Now, it's often said that the hardest, most difficult plant to grow in the world
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  is wasabi, and that's absolute nonsense.
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  I've grown thousands and thousands of wasabi plants.
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  It's really easy to grow once you've controlled
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  a few environmental variables you just don't let
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  it get too hot during the summer and it's really easy it's a
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  brassica and don't let it get stagnant don't leave
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  it in stagnant water make sure it's in running water
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  or fresh moist compost and you'll grow wasabi easily doesn't even need a mycorrhizae
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  because it's a brassica it's simple so definitely not wasabi what i think is
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  the most difficult plant in the world to grow is actually also the plant with
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  the largest flowers in the world.
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  So a single flower, not an inflorescence. An inflorescence is like a group of
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  flowers all put together. For that, that's the titanarum.
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  But the plant with the biggest flower is Rafflesia arnoldii,
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  also known as the corpse flower or the giant padma. Not panda, padma.
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  And there are a number of factors that make this plant really,
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  really difficult to grow.
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  The first is that it is a parasite.
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  It is what's called a hollow parasite, in that it doesn't have any leaves,
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  it doesn't photosynthesis, it doesn't contain any chlorophyll.
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  You wouldn't even know, if you weren't an expert, that it's actually a plant,
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  because it's not green, it's not got any roots, it's not got any shoots,
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  it's not got any leaves, but it does produce the world's biggest flower.
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  Now that's interesting, because you will find with most parasitic plants,
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  their flowers are extremely ornate and large.
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  That's because they don't have to go to the effort of photosynthesizing to get
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  their sugars. They are thieves.
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  And just like thieves in the real world, they're very ostentatious with their displays.
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  And so this is basically the equivalent of driving
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  around in a 7 Series BMW or a Porsche 911
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  turbo this is the rafflesia arnoldii the
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  world's largest flower now it's called the corpse flower because it
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  tricks pollinators into thinking that it is
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  almost like a dead animal it gives off pungent
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  a pungent smell it looks like a massive flesh
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  wound so really really lovely and the reason the reason it uses lots of energy
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  is because to create those sort of decomposing fleshy smells requires a lot
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  of energy and often these flowers have to heat up because those chemicals that are.
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  The same chemicals that mimic the decaying tissue are not very volatile.
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  It means they don't float around in the air much unless the air is hot,
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  and so they have to heat up as well.
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  So the Rafflesia plant, just check if it actually does that.
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  Yes, they heat up in a process called thermogenesis, so I wasn't too far off there.
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  But what makes it difficult to grow? Well, obviously you have to it's a obligate
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  parasite and it lives on a very specific vine in the indonesian rainforest is
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  indonesia yeah i should have done my own work here borneo sumatran rainforest,
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  so both indonesia and malaysia and malaysia share borneo don't they so you if
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  you were trying to grow this plant you would need a vast specimen of the the
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  vine that it grows on so the.
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  Tetrastigma angustifolium vine so it would you need
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  to grow the vine and then you would need to infect that
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  vine with the rafflesia plant but that's
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  not the the other only complication it's of
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  the the vine it grows on is obviously a vine so it needs something
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  to grow up so you'd either have to have a network of
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  supports or you'd have to have another tree or something like that
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  a rainforest tree for it to grow on so there's
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  a number of different complicating factors there you've got a vine that
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  needs support and then you need to infect the plant with the with
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  the rafflesia probably get some seeds and that so it
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  grows as a the rafflesia plant grows as
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  a mass of thread-like strands of tissue completely embedded
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  within and in intimate at contact with the surrounding host
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  cells of the vine so it's not like a separate plant it's
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  sort of intertwines with it and parasite parasitizes it
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  from within pretty disgusting amazingly it's
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  reported that the flowers open with a hissing sound just
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  to make it more disgusting it looks like something from the alien movie as well
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  so i've probably inspired the the eggs from the alien movie as well so we say
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  it's the world's largest flower about one meter wide and can weigh up to 11
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  kilos that's 24 pounds in old money or american money um i've never seen the plant,
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  myself i have seen an example of it one of the most famous examples is a preserved
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  specimen at kyoto botanical gardens and i've got a picture of me next to that
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  if you go on the wikipedia page.
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  For for rafflesia it's it's it's listed there that might even be my photo is it my photo,
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  let's have a look who took that photo no no no it's not my photo can't take
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  credit for it There are a few of my photos there on botanical sites on Wikipedia.
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  Then if you've gone to all that effort of growing it, the flowers only remain open for four days.
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  So if you were thinking of having a tourist attraction, then you could only
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  open your gates for four days before it withered away, which is no good.
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  As I say, it's never been grown outside of its native habitat.
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  It's one of the reasons we need to preserve rainforests like that in Borneo.
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  There is a specimen at Boga Botanical Gardens in West Java,
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  Indonesia, and that's the only one that's ever sort of
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  bloomed under managed conditions but even then I would imagine that's still
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  within its native range and I'm sure Boga Botanical Gardens was once a rainforest
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  itself so yeah I would say this is definitely the most difficult plant to grow
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  whether in soil or in hydroponics.
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  The flowers are dioecious so we
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  know there's male and there's female plants and so
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  that makes it even more complicated because that means you
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  would need a male plant and a female plant to be flowering
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  at the same time in order for you to get viable seeds and
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  these plants are rare anyway and so
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  to get two plants flowering at the same time makes it
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  even more complicated and that's why there's
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  not many seeds of a fleasier arnoldii around although i'm
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  sure on ebay there's loads to buy on ebay absolute cesspit
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  of shit seeds as it is so even
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  if you did get a male and a female plant flowering
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  very close together and successful pollination
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  between the two and those flowers remember only last for four days then you've
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  got to wait for the fruit to develop to get seeds that takes six to seven months
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  for them to mature however when they do mature each berry contains 400 to 600
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  tiny seeds so that's good and small mammals like shrews and.
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  Rich fruit. And I would imagine they're probably like other parasitic plants like,
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  mistletoe in that they're sticky and then they irritate the mammal that eats
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  them to wipe their rectum on the vines around where they are defecating so that
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  the seeds get embedded on the terastigma vines that they want to infect.
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  And that's how a lot of parasitic plants propagate is they produce sticky seeds
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  that irritate the animals that eat them and then it makes them rub their anuses,
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  whatever you want to call them, on the plants that they wish to infect.
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  Isn't this a lovely episode of Hydroponics Daily? Sorry for that.
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  So there you go, what I consider to be the most difficult plant in the world to cultivate.
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  If you think there is one that's even more difficult, that is not extinct, then let me know.
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  The other plant with the largest claim for the largest flower
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  is the titum arum and that's a but
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  that's a inflorescence and so that's an arum
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  flower and that's much easier to grow and you'll find this in many large botanical
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  gardens especially places like kew gardens and when it flowers it often makes
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  into the news lots of press releases about it and people go and see it the it
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  actually got its name from,
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  who was it, David Attenborough.
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  Make sure I get the right Attenborough. David Attenborough, the famous naturalist,
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  and he was about to do a television program, Private Life of Plants, for the BBC.
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  And this plant didn't have, the Amorphophallus titanum, the titanarium,
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  didn't have a common name.
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  And because it was the BBC, and it was in the late 80s, early 90s,
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  He couldn't go on television and possibly say the English translation of its
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  scientific name, Amorphophallus.
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  You know yeah which i think translates as giant
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  penis or something like that giant phallus and so
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  he had to come up with another name and he came up with the titan arum and that's
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  interesting that so david attenborough actually a lot of plants and animals
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  and insects and things are named after david attenborough because he's inspired
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  a lot of naturists but he actually came up with this the common name for the
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  plant because because he couldn't be on television talking about.
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  Phalluses so that's interesting that one is far
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  more easy to grow but still quite difficult and i don't
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  know if anyone's ever grown it hydroponically i would imagine it's
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  so big it would be very difficult to grow hydroponically so
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  let me know if you know any of the difficult plants to grow as
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  always if you found this interesting obviously it's not going to be useful because no
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  one's going to be growing rafflesia hydroponically if you found it
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  interesting then and it's not the worst podcast you've ever listened to please
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  as you go into autumn and the other gardening podcasts,
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  gardening podcasts thank you very much for listening until tomorrow goodbye.