Perry Grows Again!!! Posted on March 6th, 2008 by

Exactly one month ago (February 6), Emily Hoefs, our greenhouse manager, saw that Perry’s shoot tip, about 1/2 inch high, had emerged. I had noted cracks in the center of the potting mix about a week earlier, and had been hoping that they were from shoot pressure rather than drying of the mix surface. They were. :=)

The shoot is now about six inches high. Click on the thumbnail images below for images of the zero-point February 6 event and a follow-up February 7 photo.

Also pictured are Alex, already familiar to Perry fans, and Nick, new to the blog. Nick is Alex’s quasi-official replacement as the Perry scale object. Nick is to leaf as Alex was to inflorescence. For an extensive and entertaining series of Alex/meter-stick/Perry photos, click here.

For highly annotated versions of the photos (and many Perry-related photos from last year), from the “Aroids” set on my main Flickr site, click here. Scroll to the bottom of the set for the most recent photos.

Also check out the close-up of Perry’s leaf shoot, taken on March 2. Note the beautiful lichen-mimic patterns. For further information on the possible utility of such patterns to giant Amorphophallus species in their natural habitats, click here (note: this article is fully accessible only through computers at institutions that have a subscription to the journal, Gustavus being among those).

The growth of the leaf has initiated about a month earlier than that of the inflorescence last year, so we expect the leaf to be a glorious spectacle by the time our graduation ceremony occurs in late May. It could well be largest or nearly-largest leaf ever produced in Minnesota (an odd record, I’ll admit, but still impressive, at least to me). We have competition from some of the palms that grow in the Marjorie McNeely Conservatory (presently known more widely and unofficially as the Como Conservatory) in St. Paul. We will also soon have some welcome competition from them from the Amorphophallus titanum plants that we donated a few years ago.

Click here to view Perry via webcam.

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2 Comments

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