Blooming of the Titan Arum: University of Wisconsin-Madison, Department of Botany, June 2001

Pollinating the Female Flowers

Photo of Berry pollinating the female flowers

Paul Berry, director of the UW-Madison Herbarium, manually pollinates the Titan Arum after its spathe opened up on June 7. Berry cut a hole in the base of the spathe to access the female flowers, then used pollen shipped from a second Titan Arum in Florida.

Photo: Michael Rothbart



Photo of pollen

Berry holds the pollen prior to applying it to the heads of the female flowers (see photo below). The pollen was collected from a titan arum that just finished flowering at Selby Botanical Gardens in Sarasota, Fla.

Photo: Michael Rothbart



Photo of female and male flowers

This close-up photo looking through the hole cut in the spathe shows the male flowers (at very top) and female flowers (dark-colored, stem-like features below the male flowers). The light-colored material sitting in between the female flowers is fly larvae left behind by flies that had been attracted by the strong odor emitted by the titan arum. In Sumatra, the native habitat for the titan arum, it is this odor that attracts the carrion beetles and sweat bees that carry pollen from one plant to another.

Photo: Michael Rothbart