爱华网Rafflesia
Listen to part of a lecture in a Botany class（植物学课）
P: We've been talking about plant classifications and how speciesbelong to a family and families belong to an order, but sometimes,figuring out how we assign certain plant species to a particularorder is challenging, even if the plant has...unusualcharacteristics. You'd think that plants with similarcharacteristics would belong to the same order, but that's notalways true. A good example of this is a flower, that is—aflowering plant—that grows only in Malaysia and Indonesia, calledRafflesia.
植物的分类，以及如何从种到科，科到目。但是有时候，如果分类是很困难的，即使是某些有很明显特点的植物。一般来说，植物具有相似特征的是相同目的，但事实上经常不是这样的。比如一种只存在于Malaysia和Indonesia的花——大王花。
As you can see, Rafflesia is a pretty unusual plant. For starters,it's huge. The flower can grow up to a meter in width and can weighup to seven kilos—pretty big, huh There aren't any other specimensin the plant world that have flowers even close to this size. Butthat's not the only unusual characteristic of Rafflesia, in fact,that's probably one of the least strange features of the plant.
如你所看到的，大王花是一种很特别的植物。它非常大，花有一米宽，可以长到七公斤那么重，非常大。没有任何别的植物和这种特征接近。但是这不是大王花唯一特别的地方
The plant also emits a terrible stench, like rotting meat. Butagain, there are other plants with bad smelling flowers. And in thecase of Rafflesia, flies are attracted to that smell, and that'show the flowers get pollinated. So...um...Rafflesia's flowers arehuge and smelly. Rafflesia is also a parasite; it gets its energyfrom another plant instead of from the sun, which is unusual, butnot unheard of in the plant kingdom. It actually grows inside itshost, which is a type of grapevine. I mean... it grows inside itshost until it blooms—it doesn't bloom inside the host. But thatleads me to...I want to tell you really quickly about anotherplant, a plant that's also from the forests of Southeast Asia,called Mitrastema.
它还会散发一种臭味，很像腐肉的味道，也没有其他植物的味道和它一样。苍蝇会被这种气味吸引，然后帮助它授粉。大王花还是寄生植物，在开花之前一直寄生在某种grapevine上。嗯，我们先来简单讲一下另外一种植物，东南亚丛林里面的Mitrastema.
Now, Mitrastema is also a parasite, which led some to believe thatRafflesia was related to Mitrastema—that they belong to the sameorder. Mitrastema as I said is a parasite, but its flowers are muchsmaller, and don't smell bad, so you can see why there was debateabout whether they were related. But as it turns out, Mitrastema isactually related to blueberries. So, even plants that share anunusual characteristic with Rafflesia are not related to it. And,um...no plant shares all three of its unusual characteristics, andthat made classifying Rafflesia very, very difficult.
Mitrastema也是寄生植物，大王花可能是和它一个目的。但是Mitrastema的花很小也没有怪味道，所以Mitrastema和大王花之间是否有关系就备受争议。但是，结果是，Mitrastema是和蓝莓有关系，大王花并不与他有关。嘛，所以没有植物有以上这三种特征了（大、臭味、寄生），这使得大王花的分类很是困难。
Now, you're probably thinking, why don't they just analyze the DNAof the plant Well, as I said, Rafflesia is a parasite. It lacks theleaves; the green tissue that most plants need for photosynthesis.It's unable to...um...to capture the sunlight most other plants useto make food. So, it's lacking...it...it...it doesn't have theDNA—the genes—for photosynthesis, which is what we usually use toclassify plant species. But some researchers in Michigan persisted,and analyzed about 90 species of seed plants and compared them toRafflesia, and we finally had an answer. Rafflesia was part of theMalpighiales order.
有人就要问了，为什么不分析DNA呢？大家都知道大王花是寄生的，它没有叶子，它不能像其他植物一样进行光合作用，它缺少DNA。但是一些Michigan的研究者坚持分析了大概90种的种子植物与大王花对比，最后发现，大王花是Malpighiales目的。
Now, other species in the Malpighiales order includeviolets...um...poinsettias...uh...passion-flowers...what elseWillows. So it was pretty unexpected because flowers like violetsare a lot smaller than Rafflesia, right And they don't smellbad—they don't smell like rotting meat...and they're not parasitic.It took almost 200 years to classify Rafflesia, to identify itsrelatives, and I don't think anyone would have ever guessed thatit's in the order Malpighiales. I mean...you know-it'd be nice tobe able to classify species based on their obvious characteristics,[]but, it didn't work that way with Rafflesia. And unfortunately forRafflesia, and for the field of botany, it seems that Rafflesia maybe dying out. It's certainly endangered because of deforestation inits habitat. And to make matters worse, Rafflesia doesn't reproducevery well. First of all, only 10-20% of buds turn into full-fledgedflowers, and it can take them a year to grow. There are also maleflowers and female flowers, and one of each has to be in the samearea—the same vicinity—at the same time, to produce seeds, and theflies that are attracted to the flower's strong smell have to carrypollen from one flower to the other, so how often do you thinkthese events occur all together Even people who study the plant foryears may never witness it.
Malpighiales这个目呢，包括violets、poinsettias、willows，就完全没想到像violet这样花又小，又没有味道的也不是寄生的会和大王花是一类的。人们花了将近两百年去给大王花分类，我估计没人能在之前猜到会是Malpighiales。虽然说从明显特征分类是很好，但是放到大王花这里就不起作用了。但是貌似大王花由于栖息地森林被砍伐，已经濒临灭绝。而更糟糕的是，大王花的繁殖很困难。第一，只有10%-20%的花蕾会转化为发育完全的花，还分雌花雄花，必须在同一区域在同一时间才能产出种子。第二，fly被吸引过去后还得把花粉从一株花传到另一株，要这么多先天条件凑齐不易，所以很少有人有机会看到开花的全过程。
1．MAIN IDEA？（大概是说分类很难，尤其是特征很变态的）
2。大王花的特点（1。HUGE 2。让FLY 来传粉）
3。教授说M 植物属于B~~~类的，是什么意思？（M植物与大王花不是同一类的）
4。为什么不能用DNA？（不进行光合作用）
5．细节题：为什么有的人终其一生没见过never witness其长相？
答案：reproduction not often happen。繁殖太难
6。为什么很难繁殖？（1。MALE 和FEMALE 交配2。FLY 传粉两个同时发生几率很小）
7．为什么这个花味道如此难闻？Strong odor?
答案：Attract flies to pollinate.
8．为什么这种花很难被分类呢？Why classification unexpected?
答案：因为这个花are not shared by other plants in thisorder.其他跟他一类的花都没它这个长相。
9． 重听题：为什么说inside host ,not bloom？
答案：to clarify（为了阐明）
10.重听题： 为何说，blueberry没有relate。答案：划分order很难达。
