You know that “throw all of your money at the screen” feeling you get when you finally spot the thing you’ve been looking for?
This Dioscorea Elephantipes showed up on my local florist’s website and I almost let out a squeal in front of my coworkers.
Did squeal a little inside when I saw the price tag, but I took him home without a second thought!
Konijiphyta live in dry and rocky deserts in remote areas of the world. In their typical form they can be hard to tell apart from the quartz pebbles they live among – until the light hits them! Then they scatter rainbows all around them!
Because of the water they have stored within them to adapt to desert conditions, their body acts like a raindrop – breaking the light into all of it’s colors. The eyes on their surface are actually remnants of an older time and not able to see anymore – they always keep them closed. Their true eyes are deep in their bodies and can analyze the various spectra that come to them – which allows them to tell how much moisture is in the air and what kind of gems are in the rocks around them. Sometimes they can even predict how soon rain will come!
If they want to move (which is rarely) they can pull their roots into themselves and roll like a ball.
When it is exposed to any sort of nectar – it thinks there might be other flowers around and enters it’s blossoming form! In this form it changes it’s type and puts out a large flower. The colors of the flower are taken from the colors it has seen so far in it’s life. Those who smell the honey-like scent of the flower can get glimpses of the rainbows it’s eyes have seen recently and understand what they mean.
When in it’s blossoming form, the Konijiphyta is no longer able to roll freely, so it turns two of it’s roots into small legs. These cannot necessarily move far, but can be quite fast in short distances.
Most of them live elsewhere, but there are some that live on the Alolan Islands on bare slopes of volcanoes or in rocky patches!
ok so a quick lesson on the weird physiology of this species:
this is Amorphophallus titanum. it’s not the largest flower in the world, but actually the largest unbranched flower structure. this is because this isn’t actually one flower, but hundreds; the actual flowers are super tiny and simple male and female structures nested deep in the “flower” you see here! (x)(x)
closeup of the flowers (male on top, female on bottom):
the fruits will look like this when its all done blooming! (x) (x)
full life cycle from the botany department at the university of Wisconsin Madison (i got to see a couple of their plants in their non-flowering phases when i visited; they have their largest and oldest one named Bucky, and a few younger plants that they grew from his fruits):
Usually, the fruits are given to conservatories and colleges for study and endless admiration, but they’ve become more advanced hobbyists in recent years! All in all, it’s most important for those growing it to help make sure as many of its fruits as possible make it into the ground, so the species will be with us for many years to come.
some more facts:
-on average, the tuber weighs about 110 pounds. the one blooming at CC right now is actually kind of small, at around 40 pounds (it’s kind of a young plant at only 10 years old, and its only her first bloom!)
-the largest tuber is currently being grown by a surgeon in New Hampshire. it’s 305 pounds. this plant also has the record for the largest bloom so far; when it last bloomed in 2010, it was 10 feet, 2 inches tall. for scale, Audrey is a 5 foot, 5 inch bloom. i know ur dying to see the 10 foot tall one so here:
-after the first bloom, its kind of up to the plant as to when it’ll bloom again. some bloom after another 7-10 years, some bloom every 3, and a few individuals pulled back-to-back blooms a few years ago and it was a big deal.
-at this point, the population of this species in captivity has increased so there’s an average of five or so blooms in the entire world each year.
-did i mention that they reek like rotting flesh when they bloom to attract their pollinators, which are flies and beetles? bc they do that btw
-there have been cases of a single tuber sending up a couple blooms at once, and one case so far of a tuber having multiple blooms at once:
-i’ve talked on here about how weird petioles are. well, the vegetative phase of the titan arum actually is one single leaf with many leaflets, like so:
-self-pollination is rare, but it can be done with the proper procedures:
-Audrey is tied for the fourth one to bloom this year, after Java and Sumatra at the Chicago Botanical Gardens in May, Terra at the San Fransisco Conservatory of Flowers earlier this month, and Titus at Cambridge University, who bloomed at the same time as Audrey yesterday! they are all good babies and i am proud of all of them
-also yes most of these plants in captivity have have names and i should make a masterpost of them so you guys know what to name ur first born child after
-i’ve mentioned this on this blog before but i’m doing it again. they heat up to 90 degrees during bloom
tl;dr: these are good big stinky jungle babies and i love them and want to see one bloom in person one day
also, Audrey is on a live stream here if you want to see her!
#marantamonday – there are those of us who would like a day to show off their Marantas. Here’s my Maranta leuconeura doing her thing (13 hours in 8 seconds)
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#timelapse #houseplants #houseplantjournal #observe #plants #boredpanda #video #cool #science #botany #horticulture #urbanjunglebloggers #houseplantclub #plantas #växter #gardentherapy #pflanzen #gardening #buzzfeed #buzzfeedvideo #植物 #식물 #botanical #greenthumb #nature #naturegram #scientific
Victoria Amazonica Water Lilies can be up to 3 metres in diameter and can support the weight of an adult. They stay afloat because of the web-like structure of veins which are filled with air.
I accidentally knocked this plant over a couple of weeks ago, and the top broke off.
So, I decided to just try sticking that into the soil too, hoping it would root. (Looking pretty good so far… *fingers crossed*) And hoped that the bare stem might grow more leaves.
Yeah, that seems to be working out more successfully than I imagined!
It really wants to grow. Guess I’ll wait and see how it continues to develop, and maybe eventually need to thin out some of those new shoots.
One surprise volunteer plant: a mini rose I spotted in another planter a couple of weeks ago! That’s a first here.
Finally got it transferred into its own small pot to grow out for a while.
The parent plant has black spot, so I wasn’t that surprised to see some on here too Probably better to wait until this baby is bigger before giving it some sulphur spray, and hope it’s OK until then.
Giving it a little better chance to grow, at least, not getting crowded in that planter. I’m curious to see what kind of flowers it might put out, but that’s some way to go. The foliage so far looks a lot like what pretty much has to be the parent.
Probably better to wait until this baby is bigger before giving it some sulphur spray, and hope it’s OK until then. 
Urocyon's Jaunts 2.0 
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