An Arum Titan specimen. Thousands of Germans have flocked to a botanical garden to witness the freak appearance of three flowers on the giant member of the lily family, notorious for its revolting smell.(AFP/File/Torsten Blackwood)
Posted on 05/15/2006 6:19:30 PM PDT by martin_fierro
BERLIN (AFP) - Thousands of Germans have flocked to a botanical garden to witness the freak appearance of three flowers on a giant member of the lily family, notorious for its revolting smell.
Since mid-April an Arum Titan in a garden in Bonn in western Germany has been displaying three monster buds, a phenomenon described by the management as unique.
The plant is known to botanists as Amorphophallus titanum but more familiarly as the corpse-flower because of its repulsive odour.
"Our example is the only one in the world to put out several flowers simultaneously," the garden exulted on its website.
The biggest opened Saturday, reaching a size of 2.59 metres (8.5 feet) but has now withered and had to be cut Monday, the garden said.
Of the two other buds, growing from a bulb weighing 120 kilogrammes (265 pounds), one has closed but the other has yet to blossom.
The plant comes from the Indonesian island of Sumatra where it reaches an average size of 1.5 metres. But in conservatories in Europe, Australia and the United States it has reached two metres and more.
Stuttgart in southwest Germany holds the record with a flower of 2.94 metres (9.65 feet) in 2005.
Arum Titan lives for 40 years but flowers only three or four times.
The flowers last for between three and five days and provide their finest spectacle 24 hours before dying when their spathes, or sheathes, are widest open.
An Arum Titan specimen. Thousands of Germans have flocked to a botanical garden to witness the freak appearance of three flowers on the giant member of the lily family, notorious for its revolting smell.(AFP/File/Torsten Blackwood)
Or at least, that's what we tell people.
I move to rename it in honor of WJC. Not A. titanum but A. clintonum. At least both stink.
And it looks like it's got a lean to the left, too!
The newer antibiotics will take care of that...
It ain’t exactly what I would want in my yard – or any yard in the neighborhood.
Actually, in Germany it's known as Amorphophallus titanum. In the US it's Amorphophallus justaveragium.
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