Voo Doo Fun!

This is a sweet little Voo Doo Lily. I can tell that it is going to send up a bloom because if you look closely at the tip of the spike, it's not a leaf that is breaking out of the outer covering.


















Here is a better shot of it just starting on it's way to something much more spectacular.
















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It's been out for more than a week now and it's starting to turn from a light green to it's more traditional burgundy red.

It's about five feet high at this point and you can see that the frill around the flower is also starting to color and open. Wikipedia was responsible for the following:
As is typical of the Arum family, these species develop an inflorescence consisting of an elongate or ovate spathe (a sheathing bract) which usually envelops the spadix (a flower spike with a fleshy axis). The spathe can have different colors, but mostly brownish-purple or whitish-green. On the inside, they contain ridges or warts, functioning as insect traps.
The plants are monoecious. The spadix has tiny flowers: female flowers, no more than a pistil, at the bottom, then male flowers, actually a group of stamens, and then a blank sterile area. This last part, called 'the appendix', consists of sterile flowers, called staminodes, and can be especially large. There is no corolla.

It's almost open now.

It's seven feet high and most amazing. The color is intense as well as another most intriguing feature of these particular flowers.

It can be known as a "corpse flower" because it produces an intense (note the underwhelming descriptor here) fragrance that is most offensive to humans (but insects loveeeee it!)

My wonderful flower has taken a three day sabbatical in a tiny closed room in the basement with a towel in front of the crack in the bottom of the door where floor meets door. There is a mighty good reason for this.


But you will be happy to note that now that it's "intense" days are over it will get to come and regain it's prime real estate in the sun room... if it is REALLY and TRULY done with "the phase".