Rafflesia zollingeriana is a species of flowering plant in the family Rafflesiaceae, native to Java. Of three species of Rafflesia known from Java, this species has always been the most rare and restricted. It is only known from collection locales in Banyuwangi Regency, Jember Regency and Lumajang Regency, southern East Java. It was first scientifically collected in 1902 by Sijfert Hendrik Koorders on the eastern flanks of Mount Puger Watangan, a forested hill near the beach, who described it as a new species in 1918. Many decades later, a flowering plant was discovered in Meru Betiri National Park, and also in the Jember Regency, somewhat further down the coast to the east. Locals in Jember and Lumajang Regency know this plant by the name of patmo sari, patmosari and/or padmosari in Javanese. The word sari means 'essence' or 'the best part of', patmo is generally used to mean Rafflesia locally, but is originally etymologically derived from the Sanskrit word पद्म (padma), 'lotus', and also still means 'lotus' in literary Javanese.
Taxonomy Rafflesia zollingeriana was first described by Dutch-Indonesian botanist Sijfert Hendrik Koorders in his 1918 monograph on the Rafflesiaceae of Indonesia. He had collected the holotype in 1902, not far from the beach (Pantai Puger) near the village and forestry research station (boschproefstation) of Puger, in what is now the Jember Regency, on a hill called Puger Watangan. In 1997, the Rafflesiaceae expert Willem Meijer synonymised R. zollingeriana with R. patma. Other Rafflesiaceae experts disagreed, Zuhud et al. considered it a separate species based on morphological differences in their 1998 book Rafflesia Indonesia: keanekaragaman, ekologi, dan pelestariannya, Jamili Nais following this interpretation in his 2001 book Rafflesia of the World, with Agus Susatya agreeing in 2007. In 2010, molecular studies were published into the genetic variation of the genus Rafflesia; this provided evidence for re-recognition of R. zollingeriana as a distinct species again.
Etymology Koorders commemorated the Swiss botanist and mycologist Heinrich Zollinger with the specific epithet; some fifty years previous Zollinger had died from malaria in a southeast Javan village not far from where Koorders discovered his first R. zollingeriana.
Description Rafflesia species lack roots, stems and chlorophyll, and their leaves have been reduced to tiny scales. They are parasitic plants, deriving all their nutrition from their host species, which they invade by growing a mycelium-like net of foreign tissue within the roots or stems. R. zollingeriana likely only invades the roots of a Tetrastigma species, a vine related to grapes. The flower buds directly out of the thicker roots of the vine, emerging from underground. It rises up to 30 cm from the surface of the soil when fully opened. Flowers last five to seven days in situ before wilting. Rafflesia species can have different female and male flowers, or 'perfect' flowers with both sexes. R. zollingeriana is of the former type. The flowers are only functionally gonochorous: in the female (pistillate) flowers, the stamens are reduced to non-functional staminodes. In this species, the flowers measure 15 to 30 cm (5.9 to 11.8 in) across, sometimes up to 40 cm (16 in). The 'petals', or more correctly the perianth-lobes, are coloured dark red with numerous, small, pale-coloured, wart-like spots, and it is brown-red inside the perianth-tube. The flowers of Rafflesia have evolved into such bizarre structures, a special terminology is needed to describe them. Characteristics of R. zollingeriana are a single, slightly protruding annulus, and within it the central column or columna is capped with a column-disc with an erect rim on the underside with more than ten stout, conical protuberances (processus), which can grow up to 2 cm (0.8 in) in length. A closed flower bud is usually technically called a 'knop' (kuncup in Indonesian).
Similar species On Java, this species can only be confused with the two other Rafflesia species: R. patma, the most common, and R. rochussenii. R. zollingeriana is the only species to occur in the mountains of the southeast of the island, although R. patma does occur on or along the southern coasts. R. rochussenii is the only species on the island in which the elongated warts ('ramenta') on the inside surface of the perianth-tube are shaped as somewhat disc-like knobs on long stalks. In R. patma these ramenta are reduced or even somewhat absent, but in R. zollingeriana the tube is densely covered in warts ending in acute points, and some of the ramenta can be branched. The pale colour of living R. patma flowers is also distinctive, R. zollingeriana has flowers of a darker reddish-brown, a more common colour among Rafflesia in general. This characteristic is often not clear in preserved herbarium specimens.
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