page_title: Amorphophallus titanum
section_title: Cultivation
hierarchical_section_title: Amorphophallus titanum / Cultivation
caption_attribution_description: English: The inside of the Amorphophallus Titanum.
context_page_description: Amorphophallus titanum, the titan arum, is a flowering plant with the largest unbranched inflorescence in the world. The talipot palm, Corypha umbraculifera, has a larger inflorescence, but it is branched rather than unbranched. A. titanum is endemic to Sumatra.
  Due to its odor, like that of a rotting corpse, the titan arum is characterized as a carrion flower, and is also known as the corpse flower or corpse plant. For the same reason, the title "corpse flower" is also attributed to the genus Rafflesia.
context_section_description: The titan arum grows in the wild only in the equatorial rainforests of Sumatra, Indonesia. It was first scientifically described in 1878 by Italian botanist Odoardo Beccari. The plant flowers only infrequently in the wild and even more rarely when cultivated. It first flowered in cultivation at the Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew, London, UK in 1889, with over one hundred cultivated blossoms since then. The first documented flowerings in the United States were at the New York Botanical Garden in 1937 and 1939. This flowering also inspired the designation of the titan arum as the official flower of the Bronx in 1939, only to be replaced in 2000 by the day lily. The number of cultivated plants has increased in recent years, and it is not uncommon for there to be five or more flowering events in gardens around the world in a single year. Advanced pollination techniques mean that this plant is rarely cultivated by amateur gardeners. However In 2011, Roseville High School (Roseville, California) became the first high school in the world to successfully bring a titan arum to bloom.
  In 2003, the tallest bloom in cultivation, some 2.74 m (9 ft 0 in) high, was achieved at the Botanical Garden of the University of Bonn in Germany. The event was acknowledged by Guinness World Records. On 20 October 2005, this record was broken at the botanical and zoological garden Wilhelma in Stuttgart, Germany; the bloom reached a height of 2.94 m (9 ft 8 in). The record was broken again by Louis Ricciardiello, whose specimen measured 3.1 m (10 ft 2 in) tall on 18 June 2010, when it was on display at Winnipesaukee Orchids in Gilford, New Hampshire, US. This event, too, was acknowledged by Guinness World Records.
caption: The pollen area as seen from the inside (UC Davis, California)
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