Britt Forsberg, Brian O’Brien, Alex Burum, and Emily Pelton unpot the corm. The photo descriptions are given below.
1. Note the enormous stress that the corm has put on the pot while growing. We had to cut the pot to get it off, and it burst about halfway through the cut.
2. Emily, Alex, Brian, Britt, and the corm.
3. Alex Attempts to hoist the corm.
4. The corm up close. The corm weighed approximately 90 pounds (41 kg). It had one rotted spot in it – the attack had been fought off successfully. There’s probably some interesting biochemistry involved in that battle.
5. Washing the corm.
See the Titan Arum webcam for a live look at the plant. The image is renewed at five-minute intervals.
I can’t wait for this thing to blow my nose away!
If I may humbly offer some advice: if you plan to put this beastie on public display while it blooms, be prepared for big crowds. When the Huntington Botanical Gardens one did, they had no idea how popular it would be, and were unprepared for the jammed parking lot and immense crowds that resulted. On the few days it was in full bloom, people waited three hours in line to see it. Titan Arums are crowd-pleasers.
[…] We’ve observed so far that the plants tend to grow to fill and greatly stress whatever pot into which they are planted – see this earlier blog post for an idea of the magnitude of the stresses on the pot for Perry that preceded the present one:Â click here […]
[…] handlers of a 30-pound-or-so corm in the 2004 photos. We were astounded at its whopping big size. See now the earlier post on this blog, in which Alex briefly tries to hoist the 90-pound corm, and also notice the happiness tinged with bemused astonishment on all of the human […]
Thank you so much for leaving the web cam up and for the pictures of the leaf cycle and the corm. The inflorescence was gorgeous and the biology of the plant is amazing. I had no idea that any plant could heat itself up and learning that this one does and seeing the infrared shots was just neat. They stuffed demonstration model of the plant was was also quite impressive.
Also, I thought it smelled like fermented dumpster, only without that stick to the back of your throat component – I saw it on Sunday morning.
Thanks again.
[…] fit the pot that they’re in, then keep going, nearly heave themselves out of the pot, and put extraordinary stresses on the […]