Titan Arum at Singapore Botanic Gardens

Is it finally opening?


The above photo was taken earlier today about 7.30pm. It appeared that it was finally opening up, as we could see more of the maroon spathe!

For the past few weeks, I have been regularly visiting the Singapore Botanic Gardens, hoping to catch the matured inflorescence of the Titan Arum (Amorphophallus titanum) - the biggest unbranched inflorescence in the world! It was initially estimated to mature between 17 and 20 Nov 2010, but it appeared that the estimation was way wrong. As such, I had lots of photos of the immature inflorescence instead during my various visits.


Here's how it looked like during my first visit on 17 Nov 2010.


This one was taken on 19 Nov 2010. One of the bracts had withered.


During my visit on 23 Nov 2010, all bracts covering the inflorescence had withered.


Read some where that it should start maturing soon after the last bract has fallen off, and so I visited it again on 24 Nov 2010. However, the spathe remained closed.

For the past one week, I decided to just call the garden's hotline to check if it has opened up, but there were no good news.


It was only earlier today that Angie told me that she had visited the plant in the morning, and it appeared to be opening up. We visited it around 7 plus in the evening, and while it's still a long way from opening up fully, it had certainly made a lot of progress!

Will be visiting it again tomorrow morning to check if it has opened up fully.

During my trip to the Singapore Botanic Gardens the past few weeks, I saw quite a lot of other interesting stuff..


At one corner, a Pink Mempat (Cratoxylum formosum) was also blooming spectacularly!


From a distance, it looked like cherry blossom!


Here's a look at a flowering branch..


When I was there on 19 Nov 2010, the weather was great and I managed to get quite a few nice close-ups.


Lots of bees were attached to the flowers.


Some of the non-flowering plants were pretty without the flowers, like the Spikemoss (Selaginella sp.).


So are the mosses (Division Bryophyta).

Apart from the plants, there were a few "sure-can-see" animals in the Singapore Botanic Gardens too!


Among them are the Lesser Whistling Ducks (Dendrocygna javanica).


Facing different directions...


Preening...


And the Black Swans (Cygnus atratus). I was really lucky that they had a few young cygnets with them.


Once in a while, the parents would tuck their heads into the water and pick up some freshwater plants.


Black Swans are actually native to Australia. I remembered seeing wild ones when I went to Western Australia a few years ago.


I also saw an Oriental Pied Hornbill (Anthracoceros albirostris) near the entrance on one of the days.


And of course, there were the super cute Spotted Wood-owls (Strix seloputo) that I blogged about earlier.

So I guess even if there were no blooming Titan Arum, there were actually still plenty of things to see! :)