Titan Arum Amorphophallus titanum 
...Deborah Evans 
T he first flowering in botanic gardens in Victoria of this 
wonderful Sumatran plant (whose name means 
‘misshapen giant phallus’) occurred on Christmas Day 
2012 at the Royal Botanic Gardens in Melbourne. There 
have only been 80 flowerings of Amorphophallus titanum 
in cultivation since 1990, and up till then there had only 
been 21 flowerings in cultivation since it was first 
discovered by Europeans (by the Italian botanist Odoardo 
Beccari) in 1878. 
I was lucky enough to see ‘ours’ before it flowered and 
then a few days later in flower, but too late for the smell of 
rotting flesh to be obvious. I only had 
to queue for about an hour, but 
apparently people were queuing for 
up to 21/2 hours that morning. Maybe 
there is still hope for the planet if 
people will queue as long as that to 
see (and smell) a flower—or more 
correctly, the largest unbranched 
inflorescence in the world. The final 
height of the inflorescence was 180 
cm with a width of 85 cm. The 
number of visitors was estimated at 
over 20 000! 
Each year since the tuber was 
received from the Royal Botanic 
Gardens in Sydney seven years ago, 
the plant has put up a leaf-like 
structure and the staff have held their 
collective breath to see if it would 
develop into a leaf or a flower. For six 
years it was leaves, which busily 
stacked food into the tuber, 
increasing it dramatically in size each 
year. Once the leaf died down each 
year, Gardens staff lifted the tuber, 
held it in a dry condition for a couple 
of months or so and then re-potted it 
in clean potting mix (soil hygiene is critical and nematodes 
in particular are apparently a problem). The final tuber 
weighed about 34 kg, starting from 1.014 kg when it came 
from Sydney. 
Whether this tuber is now ‘finished’ or whether it will be 
able to go back to a leaf-producing cycle for 3-7 years or 
so and may then flower again is not clear—the experts 
differ. (Six or seven years is a common cycle for flowering, 
though as few as three years between flowering has been 
noted, and three times in succession in the Bonn Botanic 
Gardens, Germany, who seem to have pioneered much of 
the successful cultivation of Titan Arums.) 
The plant on public display is not the only one the RBG 
Melbourne has. There is a second one (three years old) at 
leaf stage in the pot next to the main one (see photo), and 
another at a non-public location that flowered on 
5 January 2013. That one had a 24 kg tuber (from 0.706 
kg when it arrived from Sydney) and reached a height of 
over two metres. 
The staff collected pollen from the first flower on the 
Saturday (29 December) to dry and freeze it to fertilise 
their other plants, or to send to other gardens to fertilise 
their flowers to increase the genetic diversity in the 
cultivated populations. 
The flowers are right down at the 
base of the ‘skirt’ (the spathe), with 
the red female flowers in a ring below 
the yellow male ones. The female 
flowers are receptive first (and only 
for a short time), followed a couple of 
days later by the pollen in the male 
flowers, thus reducing the chance of 
self-pollination—pollination is usually 
be flies or beetles in the wild. In order 
to preserve the plant for public 
viewing for as long as possible, the 
staff collected the pollen by making a 
careful incision and then closing it 
back up again. Some of this pollen 
was used to attempt to pollinate the 
second plant (no results available 
when going to print with this article). 
Once the inflorescences had died 
right back, samples and tissues were 
collected for storage in the National 
Herbarium of Victoria collection. The 
sections of spadix and spathe will be 
pressed and dried, and the flowers 
preserved in a special alcohol 
solution (70% ethanol and 5% 
glycerol). 
Do go onto the Gardens Facebook page to see the photos 
and more details of the ‘surgical’ techniques and the time- 
lapse video of the flowering—it really is spectacular. 
References 
Royal Botanic Gardens Melbourne, Titan Arum, factsheet. 
Neville Walsh, conservation botanist, RBG Melbourn (pers 
comm) 
http://www.youtube.com/watch7YZEk_MQoc 
https://www.facebook.com/BotanicGardensMelbourne 
http://www.theage.com.au/victoria/rare-corpse-flower- 
raises-a-stink-20121226-2bvp2.html 
http://www.theage.com.au/victoria/second-corpse-flower-a 
-bloomin-miracle-20130104- 
2c90c.html#ixzz2J4548Vsh 
Amorphophallus titanium, flowering plant (left), 
foliage of second plant (right). 
Photo: Deborah Evans 
Geelong Naturalist February 2012 9 
