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UK: Seedlings bred from world’s smelliest plant

Just 12 months since the flowering of the Royal Botanic Garden Edinburgh’s (RBGE) Amorphophallus titanum, also known as the world’s smelliest plant, staff are celebrating once more with news that pollen collected from the giant bloom has resulted in 14 healthy seedlings.

After the plant had finished flowering it was carefully dissected by RBGE’s Tropical Botanist Dr Peter Wilkie. Pollen was removed and sent to the Eden Project in Cornwall where scientists used it to cross pollinate a titan arum which had just started to bloom there.

Now horticulturists at the Botanics are nurturing the seedlings which will be grown on in the Research Houses before being put out on public display.

The Amorphophallus titanum was the first plant of its kind to flower in Scotland. A record crowd of over 9,000 people flocked to the Garden over a weekend to see the giant flower which emits a pungent odour akin to rotting flesh to attract carrion flies and other pollinating insects.

The plant corm was gifted to RBGE in 2003 by Hortus Botanicus in Leiden, Netherlands, when it was the size of an orange. In 2010 staff at the Garden had to borrow scales from Edinburgh Zoo to weigh the corm which at an impressive 153.9kgs, smashed the existing world record of 117kgs, held by Bonn Botanic Gardens, Germany, by 36.9kgs. At the time of the weigh in it had grown from the size of an orange to measuring 952mm wide and 426mm high with a circumference of 280cm.

Read more at the Royal Botanic Garden Edinburgh
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