Tropicals & Tender Perennials: Amorphophallus titanum finally makes a move, 0 by tropicbreeze

tropicbreeze wrote:
Just thought I'd show the current set up of my titanums. Last year my large one had a run of bad luck. First the wind blew it over bending the petiole at right angles (ouch!). Later a branch fell out of a tree breaking off about a third of the leaf. Insects then got into the break in the petiole and ate out the centre. Then a fungus got in and started rotting out the centre. Small wonder that after only 3 months of growth the plant gave up.

I dug out the tuber, cleaned it up and soaked it in some fungicide. Put it back in the soil for the remainder of what should have been its growing season.

For protection I put the pot in the shade house and put the 2 small titanums in with it. One of the smaller ones went dormant after growing for 2 years. But it came out of dormancy after only a couple of months or less. The other smaller one has been growing continuously for 3 years, since it emerged from the seed.

When the larger plant started to come out of dormancy I realised it was going to be too tall for inside the shade house. So I set up a bamboo framework behind the shade house (northern side) where the plant would be sheltered from the predominant wind, south easterly in the dry season. The tree over the frame and shade house is a very large Poinciana, Delonix regia. It doesn't drop large branches so the bamboo frame will protect the titanums.

In the photo below, the titanum's pot is raised up to stop tree roots invading. The palm frond was to shield the young titanums from the sun, but now the Poinciana has leafed up and is giving good filtered shade, so the palm frond can go.

If the older plant goes according past practices it should keep growing throughout the summer and winter before going dormant again. Hopefully this time there won't be any set back and the tuber will gain a lot more size. Last season with all the accidents it actually shrunk. The smaller ones I need to re-pot, during dormancy of course, whenever that might happen.