There’s been a lot of talk and activity around lately about this magnificent species so I thought it timely to kick things off on The Natural Ponderer with it!
The Titan Arum is a native of Indonesia, and has the largest unbranched inflorescence (basically a bunch of flowers) in the world, and is often mistakenly known as the largest flower in the world (that title belongs to Rafflesia sp. Read more here). We have some Titans here at the RBGM, and the pic to the left is of two them - more on those two later on.
Also known as Corpse Flower or Bunga Bangkai, Amorphophallus titanum has staggeringly large leaves with the adult foliage reaching up to three or four metres in height and two metres across. Each plant usually has only one leaf at a time, and it is in fact the petiole that forms the ‘trunk’. Usually pollinated by flies or beetles, the flowers of this giant aroid also give off a powerful fragrance upon opening – a smell much like a rotting corpse. When such an event occurs in cultivation it usually brings a big crowd, so typing ‘titan arum’ into a search engine will yield a plethora of pictures and further information.
We have another Amorphophallus (A. hewittii) at the RBGM that will have foliage as large as A. titanum, but it can't match the reproductive power of the Titan Arum. Our four Titan tubers are probably between three to five years off flowering, but they could take as many as ten or more to get up to size.
There is an archive of worldwide Titan flowerings here , and you can find a great diagram of the Titan life cycle here. There have also been some flowering already this year, and two I know of are one at the RBG Syney and one in the US. Please contact me if you know of any others!
Right-o, I’d better go check those Titans and keep them happy!!
Naturally pondering, and pondering all things natural
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Update: 16th April
- I’ve received notification of another Titan flowering, this time in Germany
- One of our tubers has just gone dormant, so I had a chance to weigh it. It is seed grown and nearly three years old to the week – and now weighs 2.52 kilos! I’m sure that’s a bit behind what it could be by now, but I’m pretty happy with the ~250% weight increase. I’m planning to keep it packed in moist sphagnum for a couple of weeks and then pot it up for another growing season. Titans often don’t have much of a dormancy period, and can start growing again straight away – so keep an eye out for a new shoot or roots when the old leaf dies off on your Titans!
