In response to Jeanne Hannah's posting about these Amorph. titanum
flowerings, I must add that she hit the nail on the head with the statement
above. These titanum flowering events provide unprecedented opportunities to
communicate messages to the public about aroids, and about plants in general.
One could also take the time to include information about pollination
biology, tropical conservation issues and other topics that relate to this
species. This plant is so charismatic in flower that it totally captures
everyone's attention. At this prime moment, people are so very open and
receptive, you have literally got them in your hands and they will hang onto
your every word.
The worst thing to do is to ignore the education opportunity and not
communicate fully with your Public Relations people since they generally
don't have the insights to provide good messages without a lot of help. If
you leave them to their own devices, PR will then resort to using a lot of
fluffed up media hype which will dilute anything real you might wish to
accomplish. The situation has the potential to quickly degenerate into a kind
of cheap carnival sideshow presentation. A certain amount of this will happen
no matter what you do.
Thank you Jeanne for all the praise, but the event at Selby was handled by a
number of people, not just me. I have to mention that Gail McDaniel grew the
plants that flowered. Also, I took all the digital web photos but the web
site was produced by our Information Services Department.
In addition, I want to add that Amorph. titanum plants that flowered this
summer are not all from seed. Our two plants both came from Symon's seed
distribution of 1992, but both Seattle and Huntington's plants were from
tissue culture distributed by Palmengarten in 1993.
Donna Atwood
Selby Gardens
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