Flowers are a wonderful gift of nature to man. Their fragile beauty and pleasant aroma (although not of all kinds) have long inspired lovers, poets and painters. There are many flowers that grow in most countries of the world. But there is also very rare types of flowersthat most people will be able to see only in the photo or in some cognitive program.
We present you the top 10 rarest flowers in the world, photos, names and interesting facts about them.
10. Ghost Orchid
This amazing flower with white-green petals grows in Florida, Cuba and the Bahamas. He prefers to live in trees deep in cypress swamps. A very specific mushroom grows there, a symbiosis with which allows the plant to receive nutrients. The flower got its name due to the stem almost invisible on the tree trunk. Because of this, it seems that the orchid is floating in the air like a ghost.
A ghostly orchid is pollinated only at night, by giant butterflies called “Antaeus hawk” with a wingspan of more than 17.2 cm. The book “The Orchid Thief” was even written about the flower by Susan Orleans, and the film “Adaptation” was later filmed based on it. The main roles in it were played by Nicolas Cage and Meryl Streep.
9. Dancing Girls (Impatiens Bequaertii)
On the ninth place in the list of the rarest and most beautiful flowers in the world is the charming orchid Impatiens Bequaertii from the tropical forests of East Africa. She looks like a little girl in a skirt and with arms spread apart.
Basically, the flowers of Impatiens Bequaertii are white, but pink and with two yellow “buttons” on the petals are rare. The underside of the flower is red like wine, and the leaves are olive green in the shape of a heart. This amazing plant needs a warm climate (from 45 to 35 degrees).
8. Hibiscus arnotti spotless (Hibiscus arnottianus)
Many people like hibiscus tea. However, it is unlikely that you have ever had tea with Arnotti hibiscus flowers, which are found in the mountain forests of Oahu and Molokai. The plant itself is a shrub that grows from 4.5 to 6 meters in height. Its smooth, dark green leaves are 10 to 14 cm long. The flowers of the plant are snowy white with yellowish-red pistils. White is interesting for the genus hibiscus, given that most of these colors are red or orange. The subspecies Arnotti spotless (immaculatus) is extremely rare and grows in only a few valleys on the island of Molokai. Its main enemies are wild goats, who are not aware that they destroy a unique and endangered species.
7. Beak of a parrot (Lotus Bertelotii)
One of the rarest flowers in the world grows in the Canary Islands. The leaves of the flower are divided into 3-5 thin leaves densely covered with small silver hairs. Its colors range from orange to red.
It was once thought that his "pollinators" were some "solar birds" that lived for a long time on the Canary Islands, but then disappeared. However, scientists have found that this plant of a funny kind is pollinated by birds with nectaries, which belong to an endangered species. Attempts were made to transfer the "beak of a parrot" to other pollinators, but not one of the experiments conducted since 2008 was successful.
6. Campion (Silene Tomentosa)
A very rare flowering plant that grows high on the rocks in Gibraltar. The campion reaches a height of 40 cm and has flowers, whose color varies from pink to light purple. By 1992, the scientific community outside of Gibraltar considered it extinct, but in 1994 a single instance of the campion was discovered. It is currently grown in the London Royal Botanic Gardens, as well as in the Gibraltar Botanical Gardens.
5. Jade Grapevine (Strongylodon macrobotrys)
This beautiful bluish-greenish flower is native to the Philippine rainforests. In length, it can reach 18 cm. Deforestation destroyed its habitat, and the plant is now considered to be endangered. The jade vine is difficult to grow in captivity due to the lack of a natural pollinator - bats.
4. Kadupul (Epiphyllum Oxypetalum)
This rare and beautiful flower grows in Sri Lanka, India, Japan, China and several Latin American countries. Kadupul also has a second name - “Queen of the Night” and is associated with many legends. It has spiritual significance for Sri Lankan Buddhists who believe that this flower is presented to Buddha by the serpentine inhabitants of Nagi. Kadupul blooms only at night and mysteriously wilts until dawn. In Japan, kadupool is called "beauty under the moon." In India, it is believed that anyone who prays to God while the kadupul is blooming will find what he wants. The Chinese use this flower to describe someone who had an impressive but very short moment of fame, since the cadupul lives only one night.
3. Rothschild’s Slipper Orchid
The Rothschild Orchid, one of the rarest flowers in the world, features beautiful red stripes and long side petals. It can grow only in the tropical forests of Mount Kinabalu in the north of the island of Borneo.
This flower is not only extremely rare, it also blooms once every 15 years. Since this type of orchid is very difficult to find, it is of high value on the black market, and the cost of one “shoe” reaches $ 5,000. This makes the Rothschild orchids a target for smugglers, who further threaten their already vulnerable existence.
2. Cadaveric Flower (Amorphophallus Titanium)
In second place in the selection of the rarest flowers on Earth is the Titanic Amorphophallus (aka “devilish language”) - one of the largest and most fetid flower in the world. In height, it reaches almost 2 meters (the specimen is known to have wagged up to 2.74 meters), weighs up to 100 kg and emits a smell comparable to amber from rotten eggs, to which stink from rotten fish is mixed. Even the dark red color of the inflorescence recalls a decaying piece of meat.
The bloom of the “cadaverous flower” lasts about two weeks, but it can be fully opened only a couple of days. And this happens, on average, once every 10 years. Its pungent “aroma” emitted during the growth period attracts insects that help pollinate the flower.
Previously, the Titanic Amorphophallus could only be found in the forests of Sumatra, and it was almost completely destroyed by humans. Currently, it grows only in the greenhouse conditions of botanical gardens.
1. Middlemist red (Middlemist Camellia)
This beautiful and extremely rare flower in appearance resembles a bright red rose. Originally from China, he was brought to England by gardener John Middlemist in 1804. And very on time, since subsequently in his homeland he was completely destroyed. Currently, only 2 known plant instances remain. One of them is located in the botanical garden of New Zealand (and it is not known how he got there), and the other is in a greenhouse in England.
