As a Botanic Garden, one of our key roles is conserving plants and caring for rare plants such as the Titan.
- Beverley Glover
Staff at the Botanic Garden are asking Friends and visitors to help name the new arrival.
Director Beverley Glover said: “We are delighted to announce that we have yet another Titan Arum plant preparing to flower – we think, within the next week! This will be the third flowering of a Titan Arum here at the Garden. Visitors may remember our ‘Tiny’ titan flower back in 2015. The Titan plant about to flower is our other plant that last flowered in 2004 and we are asking our visitors to help name our new arrival!”
The Garden will be setting up a Twitter poll asking followers to vote for their favourite name from a shortlist of four: Yoda (as the plant is currently small and green and will display something resembling a lightsaber as it heats up); Arnie (‘I’ll be Back…’); Morph and Titus (both from the plant’s Latin name Amorphophallus titanum).
Added Glover: “Our last Titan was aptly named ‘Tiny’ as it took us by surprise by flowering from a very small tuber – usually flowers only arise once the plant’s tuber weighs over 15kg. The plant about to flower is similar in weight but we are anticipating a larger flower because measurements are suggesting it’s going to be big. We’ve come up with a straw poll of names chosen by staff and we’d love our visitors to have the final say."
Native to Sumatra in Indonesia, the Titan Arum, (Amorphophallus titanum), produces one of the largest single flowering structures in the world. Also known as the corpse flower, it has the ability to self-generate heat by a process known as thermogenesis. It heats up on the first night of full flowering to produce a stench of rotting flesh that in the wild attracts carrion beetle pollinators over vast distances. The flowering structure lasts two to three days only.
Daily measurements will be tweeted from the Garden’s Twitter feed @CUBotanicGarden and a live web cam feed will be available from the Garden’s website so #ReturnOfTheTitan followers can watch the flower unfold.
Read the full story
Reproduced courtesy of the University of Cambridge
_________________________________________________