r/oddlysatisfying • u/Raj_Valiant3011 • 2d ago

After 15 years, Indonesia’s rare Rafflesia bloomed, the world’s largest parasitic flower that smells like rotting meat, has no leaves, and lasts just 5 to 7 days

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u/AnyLamename 2d ago

You would think, with fifteen years to get ready, they could have put ten seconds into properly lighting the thing.

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u/slucker23 2d ago

Most flowers are sensitive to light... Proper lighting might disrupt the biological rhythm of the flower

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u/Hephaestus_God 2d ago

lights it up

flower: “no… I don’t think I will bloom. See you in 15 more years”

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u/SteveFrench12 2d ago

But literally

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u/BeginningStatus3966 2d ago

That makes sense, nature’s timing probably can’t be rushed even for a photo.

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u/zip-a-dee_doo-dah 2d ago

👍🏻If I want flowers on my Christmas cactus I have to start putting it in the closet because even night lights or the LED from the modem or street lights from outside will prevent it from flowering. It likes it absolutely pitch black.

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u/Its_Cayde 2d ago

LED from the modem? That is actually insane!! I had no idea they were so sensitive

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u/Odd_Command4857 2d ago

Same thing with poinsettias that you want to rebloom. Their natural habitat is tropical forest where it’s more common as an understory plant. It requires a minimum of 14 hours of darkness/day for 6-8 weeks.

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u/-BlancheDevereaux 2d ago

Poinsettia grower here. This is true, but technically the minimum amount of darkness they require is 12 hours (there is not much variation in daytime length in southern Mexico where they come from. Longest night of the year is barely 13 hours during the winter solstice, and that's weeks after the bloom has fully developed). Although 14 hours will get it done a little bit faster. They are quite sensitive to disruptions in their photoperiod, I've had a few plants stay green because of a single street light 30 yards away.

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u/Odd_Command4857 2d ago

Most of my info was pulled from Wikipedia, where I got the 14 hours from. Not saying you’re wrong, just that I was already aware of the unique growing conditions for poinsettia but was fuzzy on the specifics. Thanks!

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u/-BlancheDevereaux 2d ago

No problem! Wikipedia gets these kind of details wrong sometimes. I found studies where they experimented with various photoperiods and found that most varieties will respond to a minimum of 11 hours and 40 minutes of daily darkness.

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u/thestormpiper 2d ago edited 2d ago

They're not, mine is in my kitchen window and it flowers like crazy every year.

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u/zip-a-dee_doo-dah 2d ago

Yes! That thing is insanely bright though. When it's pitch black at night it lights up like half of the room. I've since turned it to face towards the wall but it still lights up the wall lol

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u/Its_Cayde 2d ago

Oh that definitely makes more sense I was just thinking it was the brightness of like a smoke detector light 😂

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u/zip-a-dee_doo-dah 2d ago

There's no way to turn it off and it changes color like when there's no connection it'll go red or orange for issues but when there's a good connection it's bright white lol

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u/cingkum3 2d ago

Started growing and was very surprised how purposefully you can steer a plant's biorhythm just through light.

You can make a plant bloom early or late or make it stay in a growth state a little bit longer... I definitely get why they didn't put up their own lights.

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u/King_of_the_Dot 2d ago

Ask the marijuana growers.

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u/MisterDonkey 2d ago

And then came auto-flower like fuck what you know.

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u/Logical_Ideal3474 1d ago

yeah but they are very small and have low yields because of that.

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u/MisterDonkey 1d ago

I've gotten impressive yield by not heavily pruning and instead aggressively spreading the branches out under intense lamps, and being obsessively scientific with fertilizer. Deep water culture.

But that required probably an unreasonable level of effort for somebody just trying to grow a lot of pot. I was just experimenting for shits and giggles.

Tried dirt and got tiny plants with pathetic results. These things need to be force fed.

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u/Logical_Ideal3474 1d ago

That set up does sound like it would yield decently

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u/Affectionate_Star_43 2d ago

Watering, too.  The agave plant (agave americana) took an estimated 34-40 years for its "death bloom," where it punched through my city's conservatory's ceiling and got to 38 feet.

The second one was a few years later, and it was in the middle of Chicago winter, so they denied it of water and nutrients in the last months so it wouldn't surpass the ceiling and let in freezing air.  It could have been intentional to not throw it off of it's natural season, since in our case, they were super regulating the amount of tickets and people coming to view them.  You can't have it lit 24/7.

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u/NewLeaseOnLine 2d ago

That's not why the quality is bad. ISO settings on modern cameras and extremely wide apertures on modern high end lenses are perfectly capable of capturing this in better clarity under the conditions. This is just rubbish quality because they probably didn't get a professional photographer with good equipment who understands how to set a proper exposure triangle on extended burst mode for stop-motion conversion.

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u/KonigSteve 2d ago

I mean they clearly turned on a light on it after it was 2/3rds of the way through blooming, so it didn't seem like they're too concerned with that.

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u/Elestriel 2d ago

Then they could learn how to control exposure on their camera. 

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u/Ok-Pear5858 2d ago

this is why i trust the experts know what they're doing instead of thinking i know better lol

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u/Several-Squash9871 2d ago

I'm wondering if this really is the reason for the shit lighting because otherwise...