Watching Plants Grow

Mae West once said, "Anything worth doing is worth doing slowly." Slow is certainly the word when it comes to plant sex, but that didn't stop a lot of people from taking a peek at a flowering Titan arum in the University of Wisconsin's botany greenhouse recently. When the department's prize arum decided to do its thing, the university on the shores of Lake Mendota in Madison let the whole world play voyeur every 30 seconds via a video camera connected to the Internet. Why the fuss? The Titan arum, with the titillating Latin name Amorphophallus titanum, is native to Sumatra and related to the common philodendron. It also happens to bloom only a few times in its 40-year life span. Just 15 flowerings have been recorded in U.S. collections in the last 60 years. When Titan does bloom, it splurges big time. The flower--more correctly an inflorescence called a spadix containing many tiny male and female flowers--can be a whopping 10 feet tall and 3-4 feet wide, counting surrounding structures. This is no sweet rose fit for a giant vase, though; the Titan is also called the corpse flower, for good reason. When ready, it emits an odor akin to dead fish, which attracts pollinators like carrion beetles and flesh flies. Wisconsin grew its Titan from seed collected in 1993, on the same expedition that spawned a segment in David Attenborough's TV series, The Private Life of Plants (available in book form from Princeton University Press). Thomas Sharkey, botany professor at Wisconsin, says the plant "has generated tremendous interest locally and nationally." At one point, so many people tuned into Titancam that "it brought down the university server," notes Sharkey. When the department posted visitation hours, thousands more showed up to ogle the excited arum in person. The curious weren't disappointed. "The arum is truly spectacular, much more impressive than I had expected," enthuses Eldon Newcomb, emeritus professor of botany at the University of Wisconsin--so spectacular that the department raised more than $50,000 from donations and the sale of commemorative T-shirts and posters that it will use to expand its demonstration gardens. The Titan isn't the first plant to star in a green soap opera. Remember the old phrase 'watching the corn grow'? Grits thriving on a farm near Monticello, Iowa, have been smiling for more than the birdies since early last year, when Iowa Farmer Today installed a corncam to service fans hankering for green action (www.iowafarmer.com/corncam/corn.html). According to Sharon Greif, the farm's co-owner, it was such a big "e-ttraction" (2 million visitors), the newspaper renewed the show for 2001. Muses Greif, "We even got 50,000 hits in January, when there was no corn growing." Wisconsin scientists aren't just watching their prized arum--something as infrequent as a Titan blooming is a great opportunity to do real science. Systematist Paul Berry works on plant breeding systems and will try to pollinate the arum's female flowers with pollen collected from a Titan that bloomed in 1999 in Florida's Selby Botanical Gardens. Berry can't use pollen from Madison's male flowers because they open after the females wither. If successful, Berry will distribute seed to other institutions. Biochemist Sharkey has an infrared thermometer trained on the plant to gauge its temperature. Members of the arum family produce heat during flowering, which serves to volatilize gases and even melt snow in the case of our own early flowering skunk cabbage. Sharkey also wants to know what makes the inflorescence so 'fragrant,' so he'll rig a tent around the plant to analyze odors. He guesses they're probably nitrogen and sulfur gases. Essence de Titan won't sell at the perfume counter, but it's a hit with the bugs in Sumatra. Barry A. Palevitz (palevitz@dogwood.botany.uga.edu) is a contributing editor for The Scientist.

Watching Plants Grow

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