Monday, April 7th, 2008 by Brian O'Brien
Perry’s leaf began to emerge from the shoot yesterday. Stay tuned for rapid development. I’m at a chemistry meeting out of town right now, so personally missed the emergence, but Nick, who has been keeping tabs on the shoot during my absence, took some excellent photos. The leaf should eventually be titanic.
Click here to view Perry (our largest Amorphophallus titanum) via webcam.
The photos (by Nick Murray) speak for themselves in their own otherworldly way. Click on the thumbnails for larger versions.
Perry’s sibling Bob, at the Marjorie MacNeely (aka Como) Conservatory, is being no slouch at present despite Bob’s relatively small size. Bob is on the verge of fully flowering, and is producing an inflorescence that is of normal size for the initial corm weight (25 pounds, compared to Perry’s 90 pounds before flowering). Bob is from the same batch of seeds from James Symon as Perry, and we donated Bob and another sibling to Como a few years ago. Click here for the blog that Margaret Yeakel-Twum, Keeper of the Titanums, is writing about Bob, and also for a webcam that’s keeping up with Bob’s development. Flowering is predicted to occur at some time this week.
Photos courtesy of Tina Dombrowski of the Marjorie McNeely Conservatory.
Patty Hieb said
on Apr 29th, 2008
1:04 am
Love your Titan photos/info. Does anybody there know if you have any Titan Arum T-shirts left for sale?
Thanks,
Patty Hieb
Volunteer Park Conservatory
Seattle, WA
Brian said
on Apr 29th, 2008
10:32 am
Patty, it’s great to hear that you enjoy the blog. I’m planning a few more posts as the leaf matures. It’s fairly far along with opening, and we’ll be getting more and more sun, so I anticipate that growth will be even more rapid than it has been so far.
We do have a few T-shirts left, but not in all sizes. What sizes are you interested in?