Do any of you grow voodoo lilies or know anything about them?

I've only vaguely heard about voodoo lilies in the past and seen a few in fancy gardens. I saw some for sale, relatively locally and I am purchasing the tubers tomorrow.

I am going to give my mother some Amorphophallus konjac tubers for Christmas this year. The biggest of the tubers are 10 inches across and they produce a 5 or 6 foot, purple flower spike, that produces heat and smells like dead meat. The flower is pollinated by carrion flies. The leaf gets 4 foot long.

Asian people eat the bulbs and consider them medicinal. In the US, the tubers are pretty pricey to eat.






The tubers can weigh up to 50 pounds. Here's what the tubers look like.



Keith

Very cool but I assume they need to be inside for winter.To much work for me.

Our botanical gardens has a corpse flower they speak about when it blooms and smells like rotting flesh. Always makes the local news and people go to see and smell it.

Voodoo Voodoo you think your foolin?

Cool but no thanks

Interesting looking plant, Keith C.

My GF say's my house already smells like dead meat!

The tubers are hardy in the ground to zone 6. In colder zones, people bring the tubers inside, once the plant dies back in the Fall and plant them back outside, once it won't frost anymore. Moving a bunch of full sized,, 50 pound tubers would be a lot of work.

Keith

Some of the related species get very big.






Keith

I really can't imagine wanting a flower in my yard that smells like rotting flesh.

I picked up the Amorphophallus konjac tubers today. The biggest one is pretty impressive.



That bulb measures about 10 inches across and weighs 12 pounds, 1.1 ounces.

Here's a time lapse of one flowering and putting out it's leaf.



Keith

Good draw station.

The flower smells bad for less than 2 days. Some of the even larger, closely related Amorphophallus titanum have had over 75,000 people come to see them while they are in bloom. They are very popular at conservatories.

I wonder if they would make a good lure base.

Keith

The largest of the Amorphophallus konjac bulbs I gave my mom for Christmas is rapidly growing and getting close to opening.




Keith

Is that the one that smell like rotten meat?

Yes, it's supposed to smell like rotting meat for a couple of days. So far, there's no odor at all.

Keith

That's big

My Amorphophallus konjacs have been growing and propagating. The large one I gave my mother didn't bloom this year. My largest konjac flowered again this year, just before Easter. It was 47 inches tall with the pot. It smelled like dead meat for less than 2 hours. It grew 11 inches in one day. Last year its flower was 34 inches tall and never smelled bad. It is just starting to produce its leaf. It's currently less than an inch tall.





I think these four will likely bloom next year. They popped out of the dirt 3 weeks ago.



Does anyone else grow any of the Amorphophallus species?

I remember Sharon posted that she eats the noodles made out of them, in another thread.

Keith

I like how the stem of the single leaf, which tastes good to herbivores, mimics old, lichen colored wood, that would taste bad.





The single leaf looks like many leaves.



Keith

I complain about digging gladiolus and dahlia bulbs every fall. Those would do me in.