Last spring, a Titan specimen in a University of Wisconsin, Madison, greenhouse acted on its sexual juices by raising an 8-foot-long floral spike.1 Without a hint of shyness, the Wisconsin botany department shared the intimate event with the rest of the world, opening the greenhouse to visitors and showing off the overheated plant on the Internet.
On March 15, Wisconsin botanists began harvesting more than 1,000 fruits from the spent spike. While the Titan was in heat, herbarium director and systematist Paul Berry applied pollen donated by Selby Botanical Gardens in Sarasota, Fla., to the Titan's female flowers. The result was a remarkable 100% fruit set, with each orange berry containing one or two seeds. Berry doesn't take all the credit, though. Titan "isn't a terribly specific pollinator," he says—thousands of local houseflies buzzed the blooming Titan, attracted by its stench-like odor. The visiting flies probably helped spread the pollen.
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