AMORPHOPHALLUS ALBUS

ORIGINAL DESCRIPTION:

CLIMATE: Unknown

ECOLOGY: Open forests, arid thickets; 800-1000 m

SPECIES DESCRIPTION:

Tuber brown, subglobose, 5-6 cm high, 7-10 cm in diam., seasonally producing long rhizomatous offsets, these to 23 × 1.5 cm. Leaf solitary; petiole pale green with grayish green, irregular, elongate or rounded spots, and whitish dots, 40-70 × 1.5-2 cm, glabrous; leaf blade ca. 80 cm in diam., rachises winged; leaflets elliptic-lanceolate, 2-12 × 1-3 cm, acuminate.

INFLORESCENCE:

Inflorescence solitary, long pedunculate; peduncle 16-30 × 1-2 cm. Spathe cymbiform, narrowly ovate, 12-22 × 6-10 cm, acute; proximal margin of limb recurved, outside base green to pale green, inside creamy white; outside limb pale green, spotted with dark green and near margin with numerous indistinct white punctiform dots, inside creamy white with a faint pale green flush, base within densely verruculose. Spadix producing a heavy gaseous smell during female anthesis, sessile, bright pale green, turning yellowish during male anthesis, slightly curved, shorter than spathe, ca. 13.5 cm; female zone cylindric, ca. 1 × 1.2-1.3 cm, flowers congested; ovary bright green, depressed, angulate in cross section, ca. 1.5 mm high, 2.5-3 mm in diam., 2-loculed, but 1 locule reduced and sterile; style strongly oriented parallel to spadix axis, bright green, distally pale to yellowish green, 2-2.5 × ca. 1 mm; stigma lateral, slightly arching, whitish disciform, ca. 1.5 mm in diam., ca. 0.8 mm thick, entire, strongly scabrous; sterile zone between male and female zone swollen, slightly conic, 1-2.5 × 1-1.8 cm; staminodes congested; staminodes consisting of sterile entire flowers, off-white, slightly hemispheric, irregular, largest ca. 12 × 7 mm, with shallow irregular depressions, or with a few irregular grooves; male zone narrowly conic, apex slightly expanded, ca. 4 × 0.8 cm, ca. 1.5 cm in diam. at base, flowers congested; male flowers consisting of 3 or 4(or 5) stamens; stamens ca. 2 mm; filaments entirely fused, off-white, ca. 1.3 mm; anthers ca. 0.7 × 2 mm, truncate; thecae off-white, opening with apical rounded pores; connective dirty pale yellowish, flat, raised after anthesis; appendix narrowly conic, ca. 6 × 1.6 cm, finely rugulose, apex obtuse. Berries orange-red when mature, ovoid.

VARIEGATED FORMS: N/A

ETYMOLOGY: The species epithet refers to the white interior of the spathe

NOTES:

1. Amorphophallus albus is morphologically very similar to Amorphophallus krausei but differs from the latter in having thicker offsets, and very irregular and large stamindoes. Like Amorphophallus krausei it gives off a very upsetting, gaseous smell.

2. Grow in a rich soil. The species produces offsets freely and is easy in cultivation. The tuber may be stored dry when resting. This species is now also cultivated in China on a larges scale for economic purposes.

3. Plants that Chen Yi shipped in 2000 as Amorphophallus kerrii (A-103/00) were Amorphophallus albus, according to Tony Avent of Plant Delights Nursery, who grew them and noted that they were not Amorphophallus albispathus.⁴,⁵ Wilbert Hetterscheid reached the same identification and added that the plant was not Amorphophallus napalensis, as he may have suggested earlier to some correspondents.⁶,⁷

4. At Plant Delights Nursery in Raleigh, North Carolina (USDA zone 7b), the plants received from Chen Yi in 2000 as Amorphophallus kerrii, which Tony Avent identified as Amorphophallus albus, appeared to have a typical dormancy with no cold temperatures required.⁵

5. Wilbert Hetterscheid said that the offsets of Amorphophallus albus resist drying better than those of Amorphophallus krausei and that detached offsets should not lose much.⁸ He called the species very easy-going: an offset that snaps off still yields a plant the next season.¹¹ His advice was to keep the offsets on the mother tuber until it is replanted, then separate them just before planting, leaving attached any that resist separation.¹⁰,¹¹ Ron McHatton instead removed all of his offsets for years and stored them detached with little loss, and found that more of them sprouted than when they were left attached to the parent tuber.⁹

CULTIVARS:

• Amorphophallus albus ‘Green Stalkings’

HYBRIDS:

• Amorphophallus ‘Alan’s Legacy’ (Amorphophallus konjac ‘Shredded Umbrellas’ × Amorphophallus albus)

• Amorphophallus albus × Amorphophallus konjac

• Amorphophallus albus × Amorphophallus richardsiae

• Amorphophallus albus × Amorphophallus sp. ‘Frosty’

• Amorphophallus ‘Glow Light’ (Amorphophallus konjac × Amorphophallus albus)

• Amorphophallus ‘Green Genes’ (Amorphophallus konjac × Amorphophallus albus)

• Amorphophallus ‘Mary Sizemore’ (Amorphophallus albus × Amorphophallus konjac ‘Nightstick’)

• Amorphophallus ‘Meister Eckardt’ (Amorphophallus albus × Amorphophallus konjac ‘Nightstick’)