Unusual/Strangest Plant - Titan Arum (Information)

mjay2018 (36)in #plants • 6 years ago

"TITAN ARUM"

Source: Image

Titan Arum or Amorphophallus titanum is a flowering plant or a corpse flower that smells like a rotting corpse that helps him from being eaten by the insects or some species that is herbivores. This plant is very rare that comes from the forests of Sumatra. This plant can reach in 3 meters (10ft) in height.

Source: Image

It's not actually one big flower; it’s thousands upon thousands of little male and female flowers. These exude oils, while the center collects heat. The heat plus the oils create the smell that attracts the beetles that pollinate the flower. In case you were wondering, a mature plant can weigh 200 pounds.

Source: Image

Pollination: Despite huge interest in titan arum, there has been no proper scientific study of its pollination to date. What is thought to occur is that when the flowers are ready for pollination the pollen-carrying insect enters, dives to the bottom of the inflorescence, deposits pollen on the stigmas and then stays there for 24 hours, emerging with the shedding of the pollen at around the same time the following day. Whether the insects are trapped or stay in the inflorescence because of some attraction remains to be verified, but the trap idea seems reasonable. The powerful foul smell and evening to night flowering suggests the pollinators may be beetles, or possibly flies which lay eggs in cadavers. The world expert on Amorphophallus , Wilbert Hetterscheid, has suggested it is likely that carrion beetles are the true pollinators.

Source: Image

Titan Arum also gives fruit. The fruit takes five to six months for the fruit to ripen, and the fruiting process is quite beautiful to observe, as the fruits change from a gold color to orange, and finally to a dark red color once ripened.

Source: Image

After the flower dies back, a single leaf, which reaches the size of a small tree, grows from the underground corm. The leaf grows on a somewhat green stalk that branches into three sections at the top, each containing many leaflets. The leaf structure can reach up to 6 metres (20 ft) tall and 5 metres (16 ft) across. Each year, the old leaf dies and a new one grows in its place. When the corm has stored enough energy, it becomes dormant for about four months. Then, the process repeats.