Re: warning

LAM Shing (shlam@hkueee.hku.hk)
Sat, 23 Mar 1996 09:30:50 +0800

Jean wrote:

> Here a bit of warning to the lovers of the exotic: in any case do
> not (repeat NOT) keep anythig like amorphophallus in your nepenthes
> greenhouse. OK, the flowers look impressive, but let's be honest,
> they stink! Only the foolhardy wil l walk through our grrenhouse
> without a gasmask to admire the 1 meter (3 and a bit
> ft) flower of A. rivieri standing there. You are warned :-)

A. konjac (A. rivieri) is notorious for the stench. Yet it is
grown in commercial scale to make a bean curd like food called
"konjaku" in Japanese or "Mo Yu Dou Fu" in Chinese.
There is a least one Amorphophallus whose inflorescence is fragant-
Amorphophallus odoratus HETT from South China.

If you are interested in Amorphophallus and/or other aroids, join
the discussion on Aroid-l list. The listserver address is
listserv@mobot,org
and the subsrcription command is
subscribe aroid-l <your email>

About the translation, the roots of the genus name are used in English
words.

"amorpho" -> amorphorous
"phallus" -> phallic

The name was a pretty good description of the appendix of the
inflorescence.

Regards,

Shing