LAHAD DATU,Sabah, Malaysia - Scores of people here are making a beeline for farmer Leksun Injil’s house drawn by tales of a large and rare scented flower blossoming there.Leksun said the smell of rotting flesh had first given him and his family an eerie feeling and they had huddled together to pray through the night in fear of evil spirits around their home.
The next morning they realised that the pungent smell was emanating from a plant identified as Amorpophallus, a subtropical tuberous herbaceous plant related to the Bunga Bangkai or corpse flower for the smell of decaying flesh it emanates to attract insects for pollination.
At first the single bloom was mistaken for the equally rare and malodorous Rafflesia and as news spread it has drawn dozens of people since Thursday to the back of the farmer’s house close to Darvel Bay in Silam to get a glimpse of the giant flower.
- However, after looking at a photograph of the bloom, Sabah Parks assistant director Dr Jamili Nais identified it as Amorpophallus, a plant of the Araceae (yam) family.
- “It is definitely not a Rafflesia,” he said adding that the department had not recorded any Rafflesia’s blooming in Lahad Datu area though there was a when it bloomed in the Danum Valley conservation area about 100kms from Lahad Datu.
Rafflesia, he said, usually bloom in mountainous areas like Ranau, Kundasang and Tambunan in Crocker Range of Sabah and such flowers blooming in the lowland areas close to the sea are unheard of.Leksun, has since fenced in the flower with some wire mesh to protect it but said that it was beginning to wither and become smaller over the last few days compared to when it first opened.
He sees the blooming of the flower in his backyard as an omen of good things to come.
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