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
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