Today I planted a titan arum also famously known as the corpse flower. My mentor Tom over at Hawaiian Crown gifted me one. He’s been growing cacao in Hawaii for over 20 years and he’s been making tree-to-bar chocolate for almost 10 years.
The corpse flower produces the largest unbranched inflorescence that can reach over 10 feet tall. The scientific name Amorphophallus titanum roughly translates to ‘giant deformed penis’. You gotta love these scientists and their sense of humor.
This plant is insanely cool though. It’s a tuber and produces a giant corm. The largest one recorded is over 300 pounds in a green house in the UK, but typically they are about 50 pounds. It takes 7 years for a tennis ball sized corm to grow to 30 pounds. The plant will continuously produce a stalk with three leafed branches to collect energy and it dies back, goes dormant for 4 months, and grows back again. During the vegetative stage it will look like a tree straight out of a Dr. Seuss book.
When the corm weighs about 30 pounds its able to push out the first bloom. It’s famous for smelling like a rotting corpse and it is an attraction at many botanical gardens. The plant even heats up it’s spadix (the penis part) to 101F degrees to attract beetles for pollination.
I planted it in a big pot with good drainage away from our house and the neighbors. We may end up moving it eventually though. For now it should feel right at home in the cacao forest since this plant is endemic to the jungles of Sumatra.
Originally posted on 2021-11-08, part of the daily planting journal behind Ha’a Chocolate’s food forest on Hawai’i Island.