The world's largest flowers look nothing like bouquet roses: one weighs up to 10 kg and smells of rotting meat, another rises taller than a person and opens for just a day, and a third waits almost a century to bloom. Here are the record-breakers of the plant world, the difference between a flower and an inflorescence, and some "giants" you can grow in a Ukrainian garden. More flowers with photos, names and meanings are in our guide to types of flowers.
Botanists distinguish between a single flower and an inflorescence, a cluster of many small flowers on a shared stem. That is why there are several "largest flowers": rafflesia really is one flower, while titan arum and puya produce giant inflorescences. Sunflowers cause similar confusion: the "flower" is actually a head of hundreds of tiny flowers.
Rafflesia grows in the rainforests of Sumatra and Borneo. Its flower reaches about 1 metre across and weighs up to 10 kg, yet the plant has no leaves, stems or true roots: it is a parasite living inside Tetrastigma vines and emerges only as a huge bud. Its fleshy red, white-spotted petals smell of carrion to attract pollinating flies. The open flower lasts only 5–7 days. Rafflesia is one of Indonesia's national flowers and a protected plant.
This Sumatran endemic is known as the "corpse flower". Its inflorescence, a spadix wrapped in a giant maroon spathe, can exceed 3 metres. The plant stores energy in an underground corm weighing over 100 kg and blooms only every few years. Flowering lasts just 24–48 hours, during which the spadix warms to nearly body temperature to spread its rotting-meat smell. It first bloomed in cultivation at Kew Gardens in London in 1889, and today every bloom in a botanic garden draws queues of visitors. In the wild it is endangered.
This relative of the pineapple grows in the Andes of Peru and Bolivia at 3,000–4,800 m. For decades it looks like a huge spiky rosette, then it sends up a flower spike up to 10 metres tall bearing thousands of greenish-white flowers. Puya blooms once in its life, at somewhere between 40 and 100 years old by various estimates, and then dies.
This South Asian palm lives for several decades, then once in its life produces a branched inflorescence 6–8 metres tall with millions of tiny flowers, the largest branched inflorescence in the world. After its fruit ripens, the palm dies.
Among aquatic plants, Victoria has the largest flowers: its white blooms, 30–40 cm across, open in the evening and turn pink on the second night. More in Victoria giant water lily. Sacred lotus flowers also reach 25–30 cm.
To impress with a big bouquet, choose hydrangeas, peonies, large roses or proteas; browse our peony catalogue.
The titan arum blooms in the collections of major botanical gardens worldwide — each flowering draws queues of visitors. Rafflesia can only be seen in the wild in the rainforests of Indonesia and Malaysia, usually with a local guide. In Ukraine, large tropical plants and giant water lilies can be seen in botanical garden glasshouses — watch their pages for announcements of rare blooms.
Among single flowers, Rafflesia arnoldii (up to 1 m); among unbranched inflorescences, the titan arum (over 3 m).
To attract carrion flies and beetles that pollinate them.
Titan arums are grown in botanic garden glasshouses, which usually announce blooms in advance.
Outdoors, dahlias, swamp rose mallow and sunflowers; indoors, hippeastrum with flowers up to 20 cm.
Author: Maria Svitlovir
Graduated from Taras Shevchenko National University of Kyiv, Institute of Biology and Medicine (2001). BSc in Biology, MSc in Horticulture. Writes about plants, works at a garden centre selecting and repotting plants, and contributes to plant reference guides.
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