All you aroid lovers in the Northeast may take note that The University of Connecticut's Titan Arum, or Corpse Flower is about to bloom in the next few days. Go to http://titanarum.uconn.edu to see it on the corpse flower cam. This plant was started from seed ten years ago and has just achieved blooming stage. It gets its name from the scent it produces at flowering to attract sweat bees in its native forests in Sumatra. Following the bloom, the plant will die. You can go down to Connecticut to visit it if you want to. Hours are on the webcam site. In the past few years, A. titanum has bloomed at the Huntington Botanic garden in CA and the United States Botanic Garden in Washington, DC
Amorphophallus titanum to Bloom in CT
Garden, thanks for that link. I have put it in my favorites. That is so cool that they have a webcam on it.
Wow!!! How amazing! Thank you sooooo much for sharing this with us! I have it minimized on my puter and will refresh it from time to time! This is a once in a lifetime!!! Wish I weren't so far away. Thank god for puters!!!!!
Missie :) :) :)
They are closed right now and the cam views only darkness... But, EVERYONE should view this tomorrow. The growth chart is very interesting. This is really a once in a lifetime view. You should put this on your favorites and view it tomorrow! Thank you again for sharing this "gardenmart".
Missie :~)
Glad you enjoy it! They are becoming threatened because they are being dug up in the wild and shipped off to places. Because it takes them so long to reach reproducing size, this interrupts their cycles by whole generations. Huntington and other botanic gardens are researching getting them to set seed by hand pollination. No sign of flowering yet though.
I'm keeping an eye on this thread! This plant fascinates me!
Update, July 5: A. titanum at UConn has expanded at the base but hasn't opened yet. Apparently this happens relatively quickly. They aren't open for viewers yet, but some one has taken measurements and updated the growth chart for today. Apparently, the whole plant does NOT die. Sorry about the inaccuracy. Check out the link to CalState-Fullerton and see the growth pictures from their A. titanum aka "Tiffy" who rebloomed in 2003.
Well, I have been keeping an eye on the webcam! It is good to know that it will NOT die! Very interesting!
This is what happened today!!!
The Bloom Watch Continues
9:00 AM EST - In the past hour the spathe has visibly loosened its grip and the odor production has increased. It looks like today may finally be the day. Stay tuned for updates as the day progresses.
You've gotta check it out now!!! :) :) :)
Its opening!!!!!!!!
I'll be filing a first hand report tomorrow. My kids and I are going down to see it early tomorrow morning. If you tune in the webcam around 8:30 EDT you'll see us waving to all our friends on DG!
We went! I got interviewed for local tv but will probably be cut out by the class of cute 1st graders that was there as well. I will have a full report tomorrow afternoon when I can upload a picture or two.
Here's a picture of the A. titanum I took in Connecticut yesterday. The woman in the picture is one of the professors who were on duty explaining about the plant. She was shorter than me as well as the plant. They say on their website that they believe the flower has closed for good. I have a picture of their other plant which has grown a leaf.
This is better. I rotated the picture
Here is a picture of A. titanum in leaf. This is one leaf. The plant gets just one at a time and they say that it will keep it for about 18 months and then it will die off. This is their other plant. You can see the flowering one in this picture, as well. This was a wild day. They said that about 10,000 people had been through since it showed the flower bud.
My thanks to the folks down at UConn. They were amazingly patient in the heat and the stink and were very informative. I got a great t-shirt, too!
This message was edited Jul 8, 2004 7:44 PM
