REPUBLIKA.CO.ID, BENGKULU -- The Bengkulu provincial administration will hold a "Rafflesia Land Festival" on Panjang Beach, Bengkulu City, on August 21-23, 2015.
"The preparations for organizing the festival are 90 percent complete, and the festival will last for three days," Head of the Bengkulu tourism office Rudi Perdana stated here, Tuesday.
The festival will be enlivened by various competitions, including a tourism race, traditional dance performances, a fashion show on traditional wedding dresses, and a community bazaar.
A "Bengkulu Expo" will also be organized to coincide with the annual festival at the same location.
The first Rafflesia Land Festival was held in 2013 to encourage tourists to visit Bengkulu, particularly to the habitats of gigantic Rafflesia flowers in the province's forests.
"Ecotourism lovers should come to Bengkulu to enjoy the beauty and uniqueness of Rafflesia flowers in their habitats as well as other protected Sumatran habitats," he remarked.
Bengkulu, which is dubbed "The Land of Rafflesia," is set to host an international symposium on Rafflesia and Amorphophallus flowers, the world's rarest and largest flowers, in September 2015.
The symposium, to be organized jointly by LIPI and the Bengkulu administration, was originally planned to focus on Rafflesia, but the organizing committee later decided to also include Amorphophallus as a large section of the public cannot distinguish between Rafflesia and Amorphophallus flowers.
Discovered by Sir Thomas Stamford Raffles and British botanist Josepth Arnold in Bengkulu in 1818, Rafflesia is a parasitic flowering plant with no visible leaves, roots, or stem.
When in bloom, the Rafflesia emits a foul odor, similar to that of rotting meat, due to which this flower is locally named the corpse flower, or meat flower. The strong odor emitted by the flower attracts insects, such as flies and carrion beetles, which transport pollen from the male to the female flowers.
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