How did the museum get its titan arum?
MPM’s plant was given to museum botanists during Botany 2002 conference in Madison, Wisconsin. The seedling was from seeds planted in March of 2002 that were the product of a successful pollination of UW-Madison’s titan, “Big Bucky” which flowered in June, 2001. Pollen was from Marie Selby’s Botanical Garden’s (Sarasota, Florida) titan “Mr. Magnificent”. The 3 other plants in the vivarium, are offsets from the original plant. An offset results from the tuber producing another bud which eventually develops into a separate plant. Madison’s plant was grown from seed that was collected in 1993 during the filming of Attenborough’s The Private Life of Plants by Dr. James Symon and Wilbert Hetterscheid. They provided seed to researchers wanting to learn more about the life cycle of these endangered plants. Because of this dispersal of seed, titans have become more common in cultivation. Are there other titan arums in cultivation? Titan arums were first discovered by Italian botanist Odoardo B
