World's Largest Flower Skips Sex

This flower, Raffflesia micropylora Meijer, is the largest in the world, reaching up to 3 feet (1 meter) across. But what's more interesting is what it can accomplish without sex.

The Rafflesiaceae plants are parasites. Evolution has reduced them to little more than pretty petals. They lack leaves, stems and roots. They live, literally and totally, by clinging to plants in the grape family.

Now normally, plants and animals initiate some form of sex to pass along their genes, which are the software of life. Bacteria can swap hereditary information without sex, but its rare for such trades to occur in higher life forms.

So scientists were surprised to learn that mere physical contact -- direct but not sexual -- allows genes to pass from the host plant to this parasite flower and back.

The discovery was made earlier this year by Kenneth Wurdack of the National Museum of Natural History and Charles Davis of the University of Michigan. The image above was snapped by Davis, in northern Borneo.

-- Robert Roy Britt

Credit: Charles Davis, University of Michigan