The bigger the flower, the more attractive it looks. When thinking about huge flowers, a question may arise: What is the world’s biggest flower? There are many beautiful and diverse flowers in our nature with different sizes, shapes, colors, and fragrances. Flowers ranging from microscopic to giant ones weighing up to several kilograms find their unique positions in nature.
Let’s explore the list of the top 10 biggest flowers you may want to know about through this blog post.
10Lotus
Familiar with ” Water Lilly,” this aquatic perennial typically grows in river deltas and flood plains. Usually found on thick stems, flowers can reach an average height of 8 to 12 inches. They can grow deep in water up to 2.5 m. Each blossom has approximately 15 petals. A 3-inch wide receptacle holding individual seeds resembles an upside-down ice cream cone.
Cup-shaped flowers generally appear in colors ranging from pink to white. In Vedic times, they are revered in India as a symbol of divinity and purity of mind and body. Even though they bloom in partially shaded areas, the water must be warm enough, requiring 5 to 6 hours of sunlight daily. Under low-light conditions, they become dormant.
A lotus flower drops thousands of seeds every year. A few sprout immediately, and others remain dormant for a long time while waiting for favorable conditions to bring them into the limelight.
After being viable, they rehydrate and form a new lotus colony from the dormant seeds. Since the record of the oldest germination has been discovered in China, the Chinese consider them a symbol of longevity.
9Magnolia
Magnolias are evergreen shrubs with large, star-shaped flowers that appear in different shades ranging from white, pink, yellow, green, or purple. Each bloom has at least 9–15 tepals arranged in three or more whorls. These oldest flowering plants can grow from 3 m to 25 m tall.
With a few distributions, magnolias are scattered over regions of Central America, eastern North America, the West Indies, and mainly in East and Southeast Asia. Magnolia flowers are bisexual, having elongated receptacles. Since the flowers encourage beetle pollination, the carpals have an extremely tough texture to avoid damage.
Magnolia flower buds flavor rice and tea. Until now, more than 300 Magnolia species have been discovered worldwide. They have exotic roots and adapted to the Western environment. And the latest scientific research studies recognize them as the first flowering plant on Earth.
Top 10 Smallest Flowers in the World
8Hibiscus
Hibiscus are quite large flowers with more than several species distributions worldwide, prefer growing in tropical, subtropical, and warm temperate regions. The large, trumpet-shaped flowers appear in colors ranging from white to pink, blue, orange, peach, and red. In northeast Asiatic areas, huge hibiscus flowers are often found with a diameter of 8 inches.
Hibiscus flowers often change color when they age. They are widely cultivated and harvested for ornamental purposes. The Hibiscus tea made is popular in different areas by different names and can be served either hot or cold. Also, the beverage made from the Hibiscus flowers has rich vitamin C content and a tart flavor with bright red color.
The flowers are edible, and they garnish desserts. They serve as a delicacy in Mexico and also use when candied. The sour tea extracted from Hibiscus flowers has a healing effect. Hence, it slows down Cholesterol and blood pressure.
7Tree peony
Tree peonies are native to China and Bhutan but are also found in regions of Africa, Asia, and South America. They can grow to a height between 4 to 6 feet. Usually, flowering occurs in the late spring. The flowers appear in various hues, including white, violet, lilac, and red. Unlike other peonies within the plant genus “Paeonia,” tree peonies have perennial woody stems.
Tree peonies can live up to hundreds of years in freezing and hardy temperatures ranging from 20 to -40 degrees Fahrenheit. The flowers have many culinary and medicinal uses. They can cure various health issues, including respiratory problems and cracked skin. Also, they heal illnesses like fever and cough.
These stunning, enormous flowers lose their foliage in the fall, but their wooden stem doesn’t die out. Even though they prefer partially shaded areas, the blooms fade out much faster if it grows under dappled sunlight. They are widely cultivated and used in China for ornamental and medicinal purposes.
6Sunflower
A tall, perennial plant widely cultivated for its edible oil seeds. Sunflower is indigenous to the Americas but is now widely cultivated in Europe for bulk industrial-scale sunflower oil production. The sunflower plant has an erect, hairy, and hard stem that holds flowers that can reach a height of 3 meters.
The Flower of the sunflower denotes the “flower head,” consisting of numerous individual flowers with five petals of approximately 7-13 cm in width. The disk flowers appear in yellow, purple, or brown, whereas ray flowers resembling petals are yellow. In addition to cooking oil production, they have various industrial and ornamental applications.
Flowering occurs during summer. They prefer direct sunlight to complete their growth cycle. A typical sunflower produces 1000 to 2000 seeds. In their early flower stage, the buds and young flowers are directed toward the East at sunrise and the West at sunset. They also act as cleaning agents against harmful pollutants and radiation.
5Puya raimondii
Popularly known as the “Queen of Andes,” Puya raimondii forms one of the tallest inflorescences, 4 to 8 meters tall, reaching up to 15 m overall height. A single plant produces 8,000 to 20,000 flowers within three months period. They are endemic to higher regions of the Andean mountain range of Peru and Bolivia.
Its stem grows up to 25 feet and holds thousands of white cream-colored flowers with approximately 6 million seeds. Each flower with orange anthers looks bright and striking and is 2 inches wide. They have an average life span of 80 years.
Puya raimondii is the largest Bromeliad out of 3000s of Bromeliad species. They can trap pollinating birds in their spiny fronds. Hence, a long back, they hypothesized to be proto-carnivorous plants. But It is actually an adaptation to defend themselves.
4Neptune grass
A seagrass species, commonly known as Mediterranean tapeweed, is native to the Mediterranean Sea. Neptune grass is essential to the aquatic ecosystem, forming a large underwater meadow. Due to a very high carbon absorption capacity, they can absorb 15 times more carbon monoxide than Amazon rainforests.
The flowers help in their sexual reproduction. Flowers between floral bracts that form herringbone-shaped inflorescence appear in green. Flowering between September and October in the meadows closer to the sea surface depends on certain environmental factors like light and temperature and the plant’s age and size.
Neptune grasses colonize their living environment with the help of rhizomes of 1 cm wide, spread both horizontally and vertically. Horizontal rhizomes, also called plagiotropic rhizomes, at the bottom that grow up to 15 cm long harbor the plant to the substrate. And the vertical rhizomes, also called orthotropic rhizomes, increase height through continuous sedimentation.
3Talipot palm
Talipot palm is indigenous to Sri Lanka and northern and Southern India. It also cultivates in Myanmar, China, Cambodia, the Andaman Islands, and Thailand. It forms one of the largest branched inflorescences that reach 6 to 8 m in height, with millions of tiny flowers on a branched stalk at the top. Since the flowers grow and bloom as a batch, it appears like huge individual flower.
The massive cluster of small, creamy white flowers rises from the center of a group of fan-shaped leaves at the top of the trunk, attains almost 24 m in height, and from 90 to 120 cm in diameter. Thousands of yellowish-green fruits take nearly one year to mature. And after fruiting, the plant dies. They prefer growing in tropical environments.
The flowering of the talipot palm occurs only once; that is when it ages up to 40 to 80 years. Talipot palms are very useful in making umbrellas and other decorative household items. They also use in making wine. Ancient South-East Asian cultures employed the talipot palm to create palm-leaf manuscripts.
2Titan arum
Also called the “corpse flower,” the Titan arum forms the largest unbranched inflorescence. It is endemic to the rainforests of Western Sumatra on the Indonesian Islands. It smells like rotting flesh. Since the flower pollinates through the carrion-feeding flies, it is also called carrion-flower.
These unusual short-lived flowers are now cultivated worldwide through botanical gardens. The massive inflorescence consists of a petal-like spathe surrounding an inner spike called “spadix.” The large, fur-like spathe with cream to green color on the outside tightly encloses the spadix before opening to its deep purple interior.
The upper, visible half of the spadix, with yellowish-brown color, is very smooth, and the entire spadix can reach up to 3 m in height. Several unisexual flowers borne within a protective chamber formed by the spathe mature separately into cream-colored male flowers positioned above the pink-to-orange female flowers.
Palm oil production and timber harvesting threaten the corpse flower, so the Indonesian government legally protects the species, and botanists are working on several ways to support its conservation.
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1Rafflesia arnoldii
Rafflesia arnoldii, also called “Giant padma,” is the largest individual flower on Earth. Endemic to the rainforests of the Indonesian Islands, such as Borneo and Sumatra, the flower produces a strong and musty smell like rotting flesh. A fully developed flower that appears as a thick and fleshy five-lobed structure grows around one meter in diameter and weighs up to 11 kilograms.
The reddish-brown to purple flowers generate heat, an adaptation to attract the carrion-feeding flies. They live as holoparasites on Tetrastigma vines and grow as massive strands of tissue through intimate contact with the surrounding host cells from which they obtain water and other nutrients.
The vascular plant has no observable stems, leaves, or roots. Emerging from a large, maroon to dark brown-colored and 30cm wide bud that resembles a cabbage, the flowers are highly poisonous to humans. Researchers often refer to these buds as “knobs.” But now, the number of species produced per year has decreased due to the promotion of ecotourism.
