AMORPHOPHALLUS ABYSSINICUS
Photo by Alan Galloway
SYNONYMS:
HOMOTYPIC SYNONYMS: Arum abyssinicum
HETEROTYPIC SYNONYMS: N/A
ACCEPTED INFRASPECIFICS: Amorphophallus abyssinicus subsp. abyssinicus, Amorphophallus abyssinicus subsp. akeassii, Amorphophallus abyssinicus subsp. unyikae
DISTRIBUTION: Central Africa | Benin, Burkina, Cameroon, Zambezi Region (formerly Caprivi Strip), Central African Republic, Chad, Ethiopia, Ghana, Guinea, Ivory Coast, Kenya, Malawi, Niger, Nigeria, Sudan, Tanzania, Togo, Uganda, Zambia, Zaïre, Zimbabwe
Doubtfully present in Somalia
CLIMATE: Unknown
ECOLOGY: It is a tuberous geophyte and grows primarily in the seasonally dry tropical biome.
SPECIES DESCRIPTION:
Tuber subglobose to disciform, to 20 cm in diam., producing long, rhizomatous offsets. Leaf solitary; petiole to 100 cm long, green or maroon to brownish green with darker purplish green spots; lamina to ca. 80 cm in diam.; leaflets oblanceolate to linear, to ca. 15 cm long.
INFLORESCENCE:
Spathe pedunculate, glabrous, convolute at the base, enlarged in the upper part, erect, obtuse, margin subrevolute, blackish-purple. Spadix with an oblong-clavate naked apex (appendix). Ovaries numerous. Abortive flowers (neuter organs) none. Stamens very numerous, sessile, opening by two apical pores.
Inflorescence appearing just prior to the leaf, long-peduncled; peduncle to 70 cm long, as petiole; spathe to ca. 40 cm long, base and limb separated by a distinct constriction, base outside green or greenish purple with purple lines and spots or glaucous purple, inside dark purple and strongly ridged, limb outside as base, inside deep glossy maroon, the base with a glaucous blue-grey band. Spadix shorter than spathe, producing the odor of cow-dung.
VARIEGATED FORMS: N/A
PROPAGATION:
JLBG attempted this species only once, and cuttings stuck in early September rooted at 48.9%. A grower signing as Dewey reported that two Amorphophallus abyssinicus plants bloomed in the proper time sequence in summer 2004, that hand-pollination of the second inflorescence produced seed and fruit, and that by January 31st, 2005, the Amorphophallus abyssinicus seedlings were about 6 inches tall or more and most were starting a second juvenile leaf.⁹
ETYMOLOGY: This species’ epithet comes from the ancient region of Abyssinia, situated in the Horn of Africa, in the northern highlands of modern-day Ethiopia and Eritrea. Abyssinia was the name widely used in European languages for Ethiopia into the 20th century and was associated particularly with the highlands of what are now Ethiopia and Eritrea. The botanical epithet therefore preserves the geographical terminology current when the species was described, rather than referring to any feature of the plant itself. Today, Ethiopia is the appropriate modern geographical name
NOTES:
Amorphophallus abyssinicus mostly resembles Amorphophallus mosambicensis (Listed as Amorphophallus symmetronii Rendle in literature), but differs in a much sturdier spadix with a basal constriction and the ridges in the spathe base not being reticulate.
Easy of cultivation when grown in a rich soil. It will reproduce vegetatively fast from the long offsets. The tuber can be stored dry during dormancy.
Tubers bought in California as Amorphophallus abyssinicus have been reported to be Gonatopus, a different African genus. Don Bittel found that the two tubers he bought as Amorphophallus abyssinicus were round and wide at the bottom and pointed on top like a pyramid, were slow to break dormancy, and had a very short leaf and a knob or knee in the stem.¹⁰ Elizabeth Peters, who also bought her tuber in California, found that it fit the description of Gonatopus: still dormant, flat as a pancake, and with no hint of a depression where the bud sits.¹¹ Wilbert Hetterscheid, replying in the same thread, called this a common African mistake and noted that an Amorphophallus tuber usually has a noticeable depression on top in which the bud rests, while Gonatopus is more pyramidal.¹²
CULTIVARS: N/A
HYBRIDS: N/A
