Plants

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Amazing Plant
Feeding Off Roots
Sunlight Not Necessary
Camel's Foot Climber
Living Houses
How Trees Cope with the Cold
Beautiful And Useful
Seed Power
Dreaded Flowers
A Strange Friendship
Lotus Lore
A Valley of flowers
The Delectable Durian
Red for Safety
Touch Me Not
Eco-Friendly Oil
Crazy Plant
The Civet fruit tree
The Toughest EucalyptusTree
Mutual Benefits
The Plant Clock
Desert Curiosity
In Search of Water
Keep Off!
Kicking Trees!
Velcro Plants!
The Quiver Tree
Helicopter-like Seeds
The New Beginning
Growing From A Bud
The Stranglers
Two-In-One
The Garden of Algae
Ivory Substitutes
Crying Trees
The Largest Seed
Most Expensive Spice
Passion Flowers
Daffodils Dance the Twist!
Dancing Leaves
The Tallest Flowering Tree
The Super Fruit
The White Dhup
Lighthouse of the Pampas
Exploding Leaves
The Titan Arum
Plant Guide
War Paint
The Dragon's Mouth

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The Titan Arum

The inflorescence of the titan arum that grows only in the rain forest of central Sumatra in Indonesia, is the largest in the world. An inflorescence is the complete flower head of a plant including stems, stalks, bracts and flowers.
Like all arums, it has a trumpet-shaped spathe from the centre of which projects a spadix. The spathe is 90 cm across, with its lip 120 cm above the ground. The spadix rises 2.7 m tall.
The arum produces a 6 m-tall leaf that forms a canopy 4.5 m wide! The plant stores its food in an underground corm.
After several years, the plant rests for six months. There is no sign of the corm on the forest floor. Then suddenly, a giant bud appears and opens. It grows at great speed.

After two days, the entire structure collapses leaving a huge bag containing the fertilized female flowers. The bag decays, revealing thousands of scarlet berries which birds feast on.
To attract pollinators, the titan arum gives off a strong scent of rotting fish. It is so strong that even humans can smell it from 45m away!

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Last updated on :1/12/2005

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User's Comments

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sunnflower: It's really cool how this is set up.

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