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".

Amorphophallus konjac

This is a cousin to "Perry from Gustavus". This is Barry.... as he also comes from a berry. Most of the smaller plants around his base are also voo doo's of one sort or other either more Amorphophallus konjac or Sauromatum venosum.    


Barry is over 6 feet tall.

Straight from the fine folks at Wikipedia and we quote:
"Corms can form many small cormlets called cormels, from the basal areas of the new growing corms, especially when the main growing point is damaged. They are used to propagate corm forming plants. Corms of a number of species of plants are replaced every year by the plant with growth of a new corm; this process starts after the shoot has developed fully expanded leaves. The new corm forms at the shoot base just above the old corm. As the new corm is growing, short stolons are produced that end with the newly growing small cormels. As the plants grow and flower, the old corm is used up and shrivels away. The new corm that replaces the old corm grows in size, especially after flowering is done.
The old corm produces the greatest number of cormels when it is close to the soil surface. The small cormels normally take one or two more years of growth before they are large enough to flower.

The gooey part on the bottom is the old corm.

The pieces at the bottom of the picture are apparently short stolons that are going to form more cormels at their ends. They break off when taking the big corm out of the ground. They're quite brittle.


All the pieces will happily make more "Barry-s"

Perry!

 Perry the Titan opened up for a spectacular weekend of amazingness at Gustavus. The Titan arum (which can be seen on live webcam here at) http://gustavus.edu/biology/titanarum/ opened to crowds of expectant onlookers!

Sometimes things are just too interesting to sleep through. This was Perry at about one in the morning.

 Perry should have really been opening at the seams, but as it would happen, Perry didn't do what was ordinary.

 Perry is now getting rather open and interesting.

 Still noting with the seam.

 As the hours go by, it's growing more open.

Dr. Obrien from the Gustavus Linnaeus Arboretum is giving a little scientific measurement to Perry. You can see that it's not overstated when you hear that Titans produce  the world's largest flower bloom.



Ok club.... tune into the web cast and also leave a comment at the bottom here....

PS: Did we say that when they bloom they have an odor of roadkill left in the sun a few days? This is to entice the pollinators to Perry so that there will be future generations of little Perrys. Perry is a proud pollen producer at only age 17.