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| SGVCSS
member and Huntington Botanical Gardens Curator of the Desert Garden, Joe
Clements provides us with photos of the Amorphophallus titanium that recently
bloomed at the Huntington. Mr. Clements provides us with the following
commentary.
"The
specimen at the Huntington is six year old. Usually it takes 8-10 years
from seed to flower. Two structures appear to the eye; the Spadix (conical
structure that looks like a phallus) and the Spathe (the flowery structure
that looks like hugh petals). Actually the flowers are deep inside the
spathe and attached to the spadix. Pollination is difficult as female flowers
develop before the male flowers pollen is ready thus insuring cross-pollination.
The pollinator is thought to be a dung beetle."
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| "The aroma!! comes from the spadix and smells quite like a rotting whale or sea creature. Our security guards at the Huntington report they could smell it 1/2 a mile away when the wind was right. It is a corm or tuber much like a potato. Several growth stages of one very large compound solitary leaves appear and disappear, usually annually, as the corm grows large enough to support such a large flower. This one weighs between forty and fifty pounds. Only ten have ever flowered before in the United States." |
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| Below is Mark Dimmitt. Dr. Dimmitt originally grew the plant and gave it to the Huntington in March of this year. He grew it from seed obtained from a Botanic Garden in Germany. |
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