Arum Titan

The Arum Titan ( Amorphophallus titanum ) is a plant of the family of the Aracée S. Its inflorescence is largest Fleur world (but not the largest simple flower, this distinction belonging to the Rafflesia). It exceeds the size of a man. As for the close kinds Arum and Fixed , the inflorescence consists of a odorous Spadice fleshy on which are fixed the monoïques flowers, the whole wrapped by a spathe which with the aspect of a petal.

The arum Titan exhales a rotted meat perfume attracting the Coléoptère S which pollinate it. This odor is so strong that it is detectable with 800 meters.

The male and female flowers are laid out on the spadice. The female flowers open in first, followed at one or two days of interval by the male flowers, this characteristic avoiding car-fecundation. Flowering itself is short (72 hours), and during this one, the temperature of the flower increases considerably supporting the emission of its perfume.

Once the faded flower, only one sheet, which reaches the size of a small tree, leaves the ground. The sheet develops starting from a stem which is divided into three and produces a sheet made up of many leaflets. The development of the sheet can reach 6 m in height and 5 m of scale. Each year, the old sheet dies and a news replaces it. When the root (tuber) stored enough energy, it enters in period of dormancy for approximately 4 months, then the process begins again. One needs ten years for the tuber which then reaches about thirty kilograms to emit its phenomenal flower.

Discovered for the first time at Sumatra in 1878 by the Italian botanist Odoardo Beccari (1843-1920), the plant seldom flowers in nature and even more rarely in “captivity”. It flowered for the first time at the royal Botanical gardens of Kew, in Great Britain, 1889. These last years, the number of cases of flowering increased much, and it is not rare that there is now more than 5 flowerings announced the same year throughout the world.

The record of size belongs to a arum Titan having flowered in May 2003, with the botanical garden of the castle of Poppelsdorf of Bonn with a height of inflorescence of 2,74 Mr. In previous January, its tuber, weighed at the time of a repotting, made 78 kg.

The October 7th 2004, with Sydney, in Australia, a arum Titan of a diameter of 1,33 meter hatched for the first time since its seed had been planted, in 1993.

External bonds

a sequence of photographs of flowering to the botanical garden of Sydney: http://www.rbgsyd.nsw.gov.au/whats_new/titan_arum_photos
Kew Gardens, London: http://www.kew.org/titan/index.html
Huntington Botanical Gardens, California: http://www.huntington.org/BotanicalDiv/Titan2002/Titan2002.html
Davis, California: http://greenhouse.ucdavis.edu/titan
U.S. Botanical garden: http://www.usbg.gov/
Conservatory botany of Brest: http://www.mairie-brest.fr/brest/arum_titan.htm
Botanical garden of Bonn: http://www.botanik.uni-bonn.de/botgart/amorpho2003e.html

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