Tale of a Vulgar Plant: The Voodoo Lily or Corpse Plant (photo caption: me and my voodoo!)
Every year or so I get a bee in my garden bonnet and go off on a tear to find a specific and unusual plant I have heard or read about. There was the passionflower fixation, where I tried to start many varieties of passiflora from seed and got nowhere except with the locally hardy passiflora incarnata. Then there was the year of the figs- I have 3 varieties, 5 trees. I am still in love with them, but haven’t collected new varieties lately. Japanese maples were a passion for awhile. As were day lilies (I have over 50 cultivars) and pink-trumpeted daffodils. The oddest fixation that I still have is for the plants known collectively as the Voodoo Lilies, though their exact genetic/botanical relationship to each other is in some dispute.
Most of these plants are in the Amorphophallus family (do the Latin- yes, it means shaped like a man’s privates). Common names also include the corpse plant (for reasons that will become clear), Arum or Titan Arum. The first type of voodoo lily I purchased was Sauromatum venosum (not currently designated an Amorpho.) from Brent and Becky’s Bulbs in Gloucester, VA. It is pictured, along with other, above. SV has a maroon colored ‘”flower” (let’s call it an inflorescence) that is a long spike with a rounded end, covered by a mottled maroon and green maroon sheathe. This inflorescence last for about a day. This group of plants is fly pollinated, which translates into “they smell bad, like rotting meat (though I detect the lovely overtones of manure). Luckily, the smell isn’t tooo strong (I can only catch whiffs of it from the street) and it does not last too long (about 24 hours).
The first year the S. venosum bloomed (photo above-later leaf first, then inflorescence) I was puzzled. It seemed to go from maroon spike to nothing but a bulbous growth on the ground that faded away. Not long thereafter, the leaf spike emerged and later unfurled. The spike is beautiful, exotic looking and is pictured on the blog.
The second year I was ready, I watched the flower spike very closely and, the day I saw the sheathe on the spike start to separate, I went out with my camera and sat for over an hour to capture all the stages of unfurling (and made my husband shoot over 100 photos of it on his fancy digital camera). I was pleased to sit there, having my little Zen moment of being aware of the plant, what it was doing and enjoying the experience. I even bored my close friends with a story I wrote about it.
Since then I have collected a few more of these odd, related group of plants. The Dranunculus vulgaris (pictured above in flower) and Amorpho. konjac are from Niche Gardens in NC and Amorpho. bulbifer and riverii are from Brent and Becky’s bulbs. Once I have a sun room, I plan to by an Amorpho. Titanium, or Titan Arum, the largest flower in the world, at about 4 to 7 feet tall….luckily it only smells bad for 24 hours!
Remember, don’t stop and smell EVERY flower! Especially in MY yard!
Happy gardening!
The second year I was ready, I watched the flower spike very closely and, the day I saw the sheathe on the spike start to separate, I went out with my camera and sat for over an hour to capture all the stages of unfurling (and made my husband shoot over 100 photos of it on his fancy digital camera). I was pleased to sit there, having my little Zen moment of being aware of the plant, what it was doing and enjoying the experience. I even bored my close friends with a story I wrote about it.
Since then I have collected a few more of these odd, related group of plants. The Dranunculus vulgaris (pictured above in flower) and Amorpho. konjac are from Niche Gardens in NC and Amorpho. bulbifer and riverii are from Brent and Becky’s bulbs. Once I have a sun room, I plan to by an Amorpho. Titanium, or Titan Arum, the largest flower in the world, at about 4 to 7 feet tall….luckily it only smells bad for 24 hours!Remember, don’t stop and smell EVERY flower! Especially in MY yard!
Happy gardening!
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