Prodigious Plant

A specimen of the world's largest known flower last week bloomed in the U. S. for the first time. Custodian of this prodigy, whose scientific name is Amorphophallus titanum and which is called krubi by the islanders of its native Sumatra, was the New York Botanical Garden in The Bronx. Only five times before had Amorphophallus titanum bloomed outside the Sumatra jungle--twice in London's Kew Gardens, once in Holland, once in Germany, once in a botanical garden in Java. During last week's excitement Assistant Curator Wendell Holmes Camp observed that The Bronx's plant was probably the ''most photographed plant in the history of botany."

In a greenhouse which sunlight kept normally at a temperature of 85DEG, the plant had stood inert for five years in a box of earth four feet square. Three new leaves appeared but quickly withered and died. After this came a sprout which The Bronx scientists rightly took as a sign that the monster was about to bloom at last. By last week the spadix, a yellow central spike, was 6 ft. 1 1/2 in. long and thick as a telephone pole at its base. In, the final 24 hr. of its rise it grew one inch. The whole plant was 8 ft. 5 in. tall.

After a night and morning of anxious waiting by botanists with 400 spectators flattening their noses against the greenhouse glass, a fleshy spathe began to unfurl from the spadix and spread out in a bell-shaped bloom. The bell was greenish yellow outside, warm maroon inside. At full bloom the circumference of the bell's lip was 12 ft. 10 in. By this time the plant had begun in earnest to emit its characteristic odor--a sickening carrion stench.

Amorphophallus titanum is supposed not to be self-fertilizing, to require pollen from another plant. Its smell would therefore serve the purpose of attracting carrion-eating insects, carrying pollen on their legs. Last week newshawks, photographers, a water-colorist and many a botanist braved the gagging odor to watch the spectacle at close range. One botanist stood on, a stepladder, peered down into the spathe where he descried, at the base of the spadix, rows of male, female and hermaphroditic flowers.

When withering and decomposition started, The Bronx botanists cut off parts of the plant which they prepared for a pickling process involving chromic and acetic acid, alcohol, xylol and melted paraffin. The pickled pieces will be sliced .005 millimetres thin with a microtome, stained for study under the microscope. One thing the scientists especially hope to learn is the mechanism of Amorphophallus titamim's titanic stench.*

Other news concerning the growth of plants came last week from Harvard University, which announced receipt of a gift of $615,773 for a long-range research program to increase the rate at which plants convert solar energy into stores of energy available to man. Donor was Godfrey Lowell Cabot, Boston's blueblooded 76-year-old carbon black manufacturer who graduated from Harvard in 1882, magna cum laude. In memory of his late wife Mr. Cabot designated his gift the Maria Moors Cabot Foundation for Botanical Research.

Looking toward the time when Earth's supply of coal & oil gives out, imaginative scientists have long tinkered with ponderous reflectors and batteries of photoelectric cells to harness the sun's outpouring of energy. Lately they have realized that plants are better converters of this energy than any man has ever devised. Ordinary cornstalks, ground to powder, can be used as a furnace fuel, like powdered coal. The Cabot researchers will try to develop bigger, more vigorous and faster-growing trees by artificial pollination and juggling of chromosomes (heredity elements in the germ cells). After 50 years the fund, if any of it is left, may be used for any purpose Harvard designates.

*When the spadix toppled over at week's end, Dr. Camp cut into it, found that it was the source of the smell.

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