Amorphophallus titanum

[MadAboutCPs]

Hi,

I am aware that a few of you grow this type of plant. Here is a photo. To this date It is now over a metre tall and taking up alot of space. The photo shows the second growth. The visible growth is now gone and has been replaced by a much larger leaf.

A. titanum on 07/12/2003

I now believe it needs repotting but I am hesitant because it is known to be a sensitive plant which does not like its roots disturb. Any ideas on repotting with minimal fuss?

thanks,
C

 

[fatboy]

Hi C

I can tell you now that plant does need a bigger pot!!
Looks nice and healthy though.

I have close to 5,000 titanums in pots and I am constantly fooling around with them, repotting, etc.
My suggestion is that you try to remove the root ball without disturbing the soil too much. Put the root ball, with as much of the original soil in place, into the new pot, and fill around it with more soil. This is what I do and it almost always works.

If you pull the plant up and lose all the soil from around the roots and then repot you will very likely lose the petiole (leaf) BUT this isn't the end of the world. If your plant there is a metre tall then it should already have a little tuber happening and it will form a new petiole in a month or two.

First time I repotted about 200 titanums that I grew from seed I did exactly this and thought I'd lost the lot, I nearly cried. Within a week of repotting the petiole's all began going yellow and eventually they all died. I left the pots on then bench because I couldn't face emptying them out, and a few weeks later they all began showing signs of new growth.

Note though that these same plants are now only about the same size as a second batch that I planted around 6 months later and did NOT repot, so my repotting in that way has definitely slowed them down.

Cheers, Troy.

 

[Ozzy]

I have one that I'm growing from seed. It's one of fatboys by the way. I guess I didn't plant it deep enough and the whole plant flopped over when it got to be about a foot high. There were very few roots and the seed was a whole lot smaller than it was when I planted it. I thought the plant had just became detatched from the tuber. I looked in the soil for the tuber and there was nothing. I then saw it was on the bottom of the plant. I replanted it and it still seems to be growing. That was about a month ago and it still seems to be ok. I'm still hoping.

 

[MadAboutCPs]

Hi troy,

This amorphophallus was one of your seedlings that I got through Michael in Queensland. This was the first amorphophallus I ever owned (hence I start from the difficult end and work my way to the easy end). Hehe. Michael packed it really nicely as I was worried about killing it on the first go. It has now come time to repot as I have noticed that the pot has begun to stretch outwards which is not good! I may have to surgically cut the pot away. I will take your advice an put it to work.

And actually I was shocked when you said you had 5000 of them.

That photo was taken over a year ago and I have yet to post the over one metre tall petiole. I'm from Victoria, Au and I believe this species grows much slower in cooler conditions but it does not seem a bit worried about the highland conditions I am growing it in. It experiences temperatures as low as 8 degrees (sometimes lower. Melbourne weather is quite inpredictable). And temperatures as high as 40 degrees celcius. Have you experienced growing these in cooler climates? I would believe that titanum is much more hardy than thought to be.

So it looks like for me one year down, 9 years to go until it may flower. Fingers crossed.

cheers,
C