Dr. Joseph Arnold, a physician, nature lover, and explorer in the 19th century, was amazed when he first saw this R. arnoldii flower in the interior of Manna, South Bengkulu in 1818, because it can bloom up to 110 cm.
The location where Dr J. Arnold first saw the Rafflesia was called Pulo Lebbar, a place reached by the expedition of that era within 2 days of traveling down the Manna River. Dr. J. Arnold, whose name is immortalized on one type of Rafflesia, died of malaria during expeditions in the area.
The first naming process for this type of Rafflesia has its own story, which involves intrigue, politics, and greed. Actually the first stranger saw Rafflesia, not Stamford Raffles or Dr. Joseph Arnold, but Louis Auguste Deschamp, a physician and natural explorer from France, who at the end of the 18th century sailed to Java.
He was captured by the Dutch, but by the then Dutch Governor, Van Overstraten, Deschamp was not arrested and asked to carry out an expedition in Java for three years from 1791 to 1794.
The book, published in 2011, also tells us that Deschamp first saw, collected specimens, and described the Rafflesia found on Nusakambangan Island in 1797 or 20 years earlier than Dr. Joseph Arnold's staggering discovery.
Then in 1798, Deschamp returned to France with all his collections. As he approached the English Channel, his ship was captured and all his collection captured by the British. At that moment, after seeing the spoils of specimen collection, British botanists realized that Deschamp had discovered a very unique and unheard of kind, and there was a secret competition among botanists about who would publish such an amazing type.
They also think of whoever they are, the astonishing kind must be described or named by the English, not the Dutch let alone the French. So Raffles, then Governor-General of England in Bengkulu, ordered William Jack to immediately describe the type found in South Bengkulu (Nais, 2001; Meijer, 1997).