Interesting Story

From: plantnut at shadow.net (Dewey Fisk) on 1998.06.14 at 14:56:38(2304) Craig Allen, Curator of the Rare Plant House at Fairchild Tropical Garden, tells me the following.... After Hurricane Andrew the Rare Plant House was almost destroyed and there was no room or place to really 'take care' of the Amorphophallus titanums that they had. These were from the seed received from Dr. Jim Symon. So, they stayed in 10 inch pots for almost three years. The plants were watered and fertilized normally because they were in a controled condition. Over the almost three years, the 10 inch pots swelled and were 'as round as basketballs'. When, finally, circumstances were ripe for repotting, it was found that each of the 'basketball' twelve pots had multiple tubers in them. It seems that the stress of being confined had made the tubers devide instead of becoming one large tuber. He now has over fifty plants.....(Sorry, FTG does not ship.) This goes against all that we have been told about A. titanum not having pups but.... who has left tubers in one pot for almost three years till they swelled up? It is amazing just what someone can learn by actually neglecting a plant. Craig also tells me that when repotting, he put the tuber that is now in inflorescence in a thirty gallon pot. Normally, this tuber would have gone in a much smaller pot but the experience of blowing up the pot was to be averted.... This is the one that bloomed... So, conclusions are these.... To multiple... leave in a crowded pot.... To bloom.... put a medium size tuber in a very large pot. Again, this is contrary to all we have been told about this plant but.... Nothing is ever certain and new information often makes old information untrue and obsolete. The inflorescence should be open the first of the week... Monday, Tuesday or, at the latest, Wednesday. I shall be there with the camera just firing away.... Interesting? Dewey +More Dewey E. Fisk, Plant Nut THE PHILODENDRON PHREAQUE Your Source for Tropical Araceae

From: Gary Meltzer <kathann1 at tsoft.com> on 1998.06.15 at 02:57:27(2307) At 09:57 AM 6/14/98 -0500, Dewey Fisk wrote: >Craig Allen, Curator of the Rare Plant House at Fairchild Tropical +More Garden, > This is similar to the Axolotl, an amphibian found only in Mexico. The story goes that after WW 2, the bombed-out Berlin Aquarium was being rehabilitated, when 2 large Mexican salamanders were found where none had been in the collection before. It was found that the Axolotl, Ambystoma sp.,a Mexican larval salamander that lives it's entire life in the juvenile state (neoteny), including external gills and the ability to breed and reproduce, was, under the stress placed upon it, the Mexican salamander, a normal air breathing terrestrial animal. Papayas under certain stress also can (and do) change sexes. My papayas went from perfect flowers into a very cold winter, survived with female flowers for 3 months, and have spent the last 10 years producing only male flowers. Therefore, no more fruit. It has also been found that vegetables produced for far northern areas with short growing seasons do better than standard vegetable varieties when grown in Texas. Perhaps putting stress on our plants is the cause of chromosomal alterations causing new "varieties" to form. Some bamboos when sprayed with Round-up insufficient to completely kill the plant, come back variegated. I'm attempting to do this with Arum italicum, which is a pest here. Very Round-up resistant. Sorry if the diversion is out of order. Gary

From: Steve Marak <samarak at arachne.uark.edu> on 1998.06.15 at 03:28:32(2310) Dewey, in light of your *very* interesting story, I guess I can find the strength to admit it: My name is Steve, and I ...... am a habitual Amorphophallus underpotter. Since A. titanum is the Holy Grail of phalloid phanciers, I am ashamed to admit that I have mistreated it in any way whatever. Only hearing that even a Fairchild sometimes underpots things gives me the courage to confess. (I will ignore the fact that I was not trying to repair hurricane damage - an excuse I am quite happy not to have.) In my case, knowing the eventual size of A. titanum, and my very limited indoor growing space, I intentionally kept most of the titanums underpotted, trying to grow them smaller and "harder" to give me more time to enjoy them (and find suitable homes for most of them, eventually). I noticed some time back that they did not seem to resent this treatment, as I'd feared they would. Only this year, though, did I convince myself that there really were more petioles in some of those pots than there should be. A number of us have reported on large A. konjac tubers which mysteriously decided to become several smaller tubers, without any cultural trigger we could identify. I've had a similar experience with A. albispathus, too. After becoming rather crowded this past year (and, as a habitual underpotter, I did nothing about it), it went into a veritable orgy of offset production. On repotting those, it appears I will have several inflorescences. It will be interesting to observe just how widespread this behavior is in the genus, and how reliably it occurs. Maybe instead of calling myself a habitual underpotter I could claim I am a researcher on the forefront of Amorphophallus propagation. Steve +More -- Steve Marak -- samarak@arachne.uark.edu

From: plantnut at shadow.net (Dewey Fisk) on 1998.06.15 at 14:50:16(2314) >Dewey, in light of your *very* interesting story, I guess I can find the >strength to admit it: > >My name is Steve, and I ...... am a habitual Amorphophallus underpotter. My name is Dewey and I, too, am a habitual Amorphophallus underpotter.... I do it for economic reasons. It costs a lot of money to pot some of these things in 30 gallon pots. I cringed this spring when I had to put a 35 pound tuber of A. paeoniifolius in a 30 gal... but, if I did not, it would fall over... I have experienced the multiplication of tubers in tight pots but I did not really think anything about it at the time. I have a plant of A. titanum in a 7 gal. pot that is just over 4 ft. high and it has been 'up' since spring of '97. I really wonder how large the tuber is and if it is pot bound. There is no evidence of swelling on the sides of the pot... The more we observe, the more we will learn... Be sure and check out the Web Page for FTG and see this marvelous plant. Dewey +More Dewey E. Fisk, Plant Nut THE PHILODENDRON PHREAQUE Your Source for Tropical Araceae

From: Wilbert Hetterscheid <hetter at vkc.nl> on 1998.06.19 at 18:49:06(2338) O.k. I've had it with you guys!!! Torturing Amorphophallus in small pots is just NOT DONE, o.k.!!!!!! Now to the phenomenon itself: phalloid tubers/corms usually have small additional buds all over, usually dormant. When the tuber doesn't feel happy (reasons may be being cramped, having lost the apical bud, being severely damaged, either mechanically or by nematodes) these accessorial buds will start developing new shoots. Multiple leaves may arise and every leave is entitled to its own tuber, and that is exactly what happens. It may all seem o.k. but the plants are suffering.............sob, sob. Cheers, Wilbert +More > >Dewey, in light of your *very* interesting story, I guess I can find > the > >strength to admit it: > > > >My name is Steve, and I ...... am a habitual Amorphophallus > underpotter. > > My name is Dewey and I, too, am a habitual Amorphophallus > underpotter.... > > I do it for economic reasons. It costs a lot of money to pot some of > these > things in 30 gallon pots. I cringed this spring when I had to put a > 35 > pound tuber of A. paeoniifolius in a 30 gal... but, if I did not, it > would > fall over... > > I have experienced the multiplication of tubers in tight pots but I > did > not really think anything about it at the time. > > I have a plant of A. titanum in a 7 gal. pot that is just over 4 ft. > high > and it has been 'up' since spring of '97. I really wonder how large > the > tuber is and if it is pot bound. There is no evidence of swelling on > the > sides of the pot... > > The more we observe, the more we will learn... > > Be sure and check out the Web Page for FTG and see this marvelous > plant. > Dewey > > Dewey E. Fisk, Plant Nut > THE PHILODENDRON PHREAQUE > Your Source for Tropical Araceae > > >

Note: this is a very old post, so no reply function is available.