This one is always a crowd
pleaser, since it is both semi - rare and terribly smelly to say nothing of
been huge. It is a family member of the
cala lily family which we all know well and has naturally attracted plenty of
hobbyists.
So every few years, one of these
plants does bloom and stinks up the greenhouse in which it resides and we have
the obligatory press release. It is the
panda bear of the plant world.
I added material on it from Wikipedia.
Rather inevitably it uses carrion seeking flys to pollinate.
23 April 2011 Last updated at 10:26 ET
The 17-year-old Amorphophallus titanum has never bloomed before
Thousands of people are flocking to the northern Swiss city of Basel
The Amorphophallus titanum - known as corpse flower because
it exudes a smell of rotting flesh - is the first to blossom in Switzerland
The Basel Botanical Gardens expects the 6.6ft (2m) plant to attract
10,000 people whilst in bloom.
The bloom is set to wilt late Saturday or Sunday.
Worldwide, there have been only 134 recorded blooms from artificial
cultivation, according to AP news agency.
The flower first began to poke out of the soil in March, and in the
past few days it had been growing at about 6cm a day, according
to Swissinfo news website.
Its mother plant last bloomed in the Frankfurt Palm
Garden
Originally native to the tropical rainforests on the Indonesian island of Sumatra
The flower's smell, said to be a cross between burnt sugar and rotting
flesh, is designed to attract insects for pollination.
Amorphophallus titanium
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
The titan arum or Amorphophallus titanum (from Ancient Greek amorphos,
"without form, misshapen" + phallos, "phallus", and titan,
"giant") is a flowering plant with
the largest unbranched inflorescence in
the world. (The largest single flower is borne by the Rafflesia arnoldii;
the largest branched inflorescence in the plant kingdom belongs to
the Talipot palm, Corypha umbraculifera).
Due to its odor, which is reminiscent of the smell of a decomposing
mammal,[1] the
titan arum is also known as a carrion flower, the
"Corpse flower", or "Corpse plant" (Indonesian: bunga
bangkai – bunga means flower, while bangkai means
corpse or cadaver; for the same reason, the same title is also attributed
to Rafflesia which,
like the titan arum, also grows in the rainforests of Sumatra).
Distribution
Amorphophallus titanum is endemic to
western Sumatra, where
it grows in openings in rainforests on limestone hills.[2] The
plant is cultivated by botanic
gardens and private collectors around the world.
Description
Titan Arum at Royal Botanic
Gardens, Kew, London on
8 June 2005, ten days before it opened. The plant is at the stage where the
grooved spathe is
being revealed, with just peeping above it the darker green spadix. The spathe will fold
open to produce a red bell-shaped structure at the base of the spadix. The
plant is about 1 metre (3 ft) high in this picture.
The titan arum's inflorescence can
reach over 3 metres (10 ft) in height. Like the related cuckoo
pint and calla lily, it consists of a fragrant spadix of flowers wrapped
by a spathe,
which looks like the flower's single petal. In the case of the Titan Arum, the
spathe is green on the outside and dark burgundy red on the inside, and deeply
furrowed.
The spadix is hollow and
resembles a large loaf ofFrench bread. The upper, visible portion of the spadix
is covered in pollen, while its lower extremity is spangled with bright
red-orange carpels.
The "fragrance" of the inflorescence resembles rotting meat, attracting carrion-eating beetles and Flesh
Flies (family Sarcophagidae) that pollinate it.
The flower's deep red color and texture contribute to the illusion that the
spathe is a piece of meat. During bloom, the tip of the spadix is approximately
human body temperature, which helps the perfume volatilize; this heat is also
believed to assist in the illusion that attracts carcass-eating insects.
Both male and female flowers grow in the same inflorescence. The female
flowers open first, then a day or two following, the male flowers open. This
prevents the flower from self-pollinating.
After the flower dies back, a single leaf, which reaches the size of a
small tree, grows from the underground corm. The leaf grows on a
semi-green stalk that branches into three sections at the top, each containing
many leaflets. The leaf structure can reach up to 6 metres (20 ft)
tall and 5 metres (16 ft) across. Each year, the old leaf dies and a
new one grows in its place. When the corm has stored enough energy, it becomes
dormant for about 4 months. Then, the process repeats.
The corm is the largest known, weighing around 50 kilograms
(110 lb).[3] When
a specimen at the Princess of Wales Conservatory, Kew Gardens,
was repotted after its dormant period, the weight was recorded as
91 kilograms (200 lb).
Cultivation
The titan arum grows in the wild only in the equatorial rainforests of Sumatra, Indonesia. It was first
scientifically described in 1878 by Italian botanistOdoardo Beccari. The
plant flowers only infrequently in the wild and even more rarely when
cultivated. It first flowered in cultivation at the Royal Botanic Gardens at Kew in London, in 1889, with over 100
cultivated blossoms since then. The first documented flowerings in the United States were at New York
Botanical Garden in 1937 and 1939. This flowering also inspired the
designation of the titan arum as the official flower of the Bronx in 1939,
only to be replaced in 2000 by the day lily. The
number of cultivated plants has increased in recent years, and it is not
uncommon for there to be five or more flowering events in gardens around the
world in a single year. The titan arum is more commonly available to the
advanced gardener due to pollination techniques.
The popular name 'Titan arum' was invented by the broadcaster and
naturalist Sir David
Attenborough, for his BBC series 'The Private Life of Plants,' in which the
flowering and pollination of the plant were filmed for the first time.
Attenborough felt that constantly referring to the plant
as Amorphophalluson a popular TV documentary would be inappropriate.
In 2003, the tallest bloom in cultivation, some 2.74 m (8 ft. 11
in.) high, was achieved at the Botanical Garden of the University of Bonn in Germany. The event was
acknowledged by the Guinness Book of Records.[6] On
20 October 2005, this record was broken at the botanical and zoological gardenWilhelma in Stuttgart, Germany . The bloom reached a height of
2.94 m (9 ft. 6 in.).
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