Behavioral Ecology Blog

It’s unusual for me to blog about plants- but here goes, it’s too cool to pass up!  The UC Berkeley Botanical Gardens has a world class collection of plants of the Genus Agave. There are something like 80 species represented, making this a very large representation. One particular species though it causing a lot of commotion for Agave lovers (and I suspect plant-types more generally). A. gentryi is a large plant found at high elevation n the Mexica Desert. It (like some other Agaves) blooms only once every 60 years, and is currently days away from bloom. In addition, Avaves are monocarpic, which means that they die after flowering.. 

The plant is 18 feet tall, and leaves radiate out over 10 feet: Per Bot Garden curators:

We are expecting a large yellow show of enormous proportions. The first hint of a bloom was the appearance of an ‘asparagus-like’ shoot in early September. It has been steadily increasing, still resembling a giant asparagus stalk, ever since and is now over 18 ft tall.

Some more photos and info about the Bot Garden can be found here.

In other news, Trudy the Titan is fruiting by the minute!

The titan arum, Amorphophallus titanum, (CORPSE FLOWER) is one of the largest and most spectacular (for both appearance and odor) blooms in the world, and an experience you will not want to miss. These blooms are not highly predictable (it has been 2 years since we saw one here), but we are estimating the full ‘grand’ opening and smell sometime in the week after July 30. It is certainly worth visiting to watch it develop, and it will continue to amaze for about a week after it opens. The strong stench of dead flesh for which it is named is strong for only about the first 12 hrs after it fully opens.

The plant has been raised from seed here in the Garden since 1995 and this is its first bloom. Following the national tradition of naming the plant beginning with the letter “T”, we have dubbed it “Titania” after the Queen of the Fairies in William Shakespeare’s Midsummer’s Night Dream.

‘Titania’ is one of about 20,000 accessions representing 307 plant families found in our collection. The approximately 12,800 different species and subspecies make it one of the largest and most diverse collections in the country. The Garden also has a large number of rare and endangered California native plants on display, many of which are part of its collection for the national Center for Plant Conservation.