Well, you try yours first and then I'll go :o) Dan

Very funny, maybe when they become cheaper and more available I will have the motivation to try it.

Hi.

Just responding to this thread. I am growing Amorphophallus titanum in Melbourne, Australia. At first, from all the information I could find out there, it stated that titanum is a tropical and requires warm conditions to grow succesfully. I've only had mine for about a year now and from a seedling that was from Troy. In that time it has experienced temperatures as low as 10 degrees - 35 degrees celcius (maybe higher as the weather here is inconsistent. To date the new petiole is over a metre tall after the first one shrivelled away. It is growing outside in an unheated greenhouse and eventually I plan to move it outside. If anyone else has had experiences please don't heistate to email me at cphobby2000@hotmail.com

kindest regards,
C

Due to a slight malfunction with my greenhouse heater last winter, the entire greenhouse (including several titanums) reached 44 deg F (6.5 deg C) for several consecutive nights. There was no apparent damage to any of the titanums, all of which are growing well. I wouldn't suggest subjecting titanums to those kinds of temperatures every night throughout the winter, but a few cold nights didn't kill mine.

Ron

It isn't at all unusual for plants within the same genus to have very different cold tolerances. To give an example from the banana world, most species of Musa are very tropical and frost tender. But there are some species of the genus Musa that show impressive degrees of cold hardiness. Musa basjoo (Japanese banana), for example, is commonly overwintered in cold winter zones (down to zone 6 with mulching). It's not a coincidence that this hardiness is associated with a species native to Japan (where a degree of cold is characteristic of the winter season). The genus Amorphophallus is represented by many species, most tropical, many subtropical, and a smaller number of species able to survive to colder zones (6-7).
However, being that titanum is indigenous to Sumatra and adapted to a lowland, equatorial climate, it would not be realistic to expect it to survive planted outdoors in a zone 5 climate. There is no need to do the cold hardiness experiment in this case, but if you want to get rid of the titanum, I do believe that a number of people would be willing to buy it off of ebay.

My little bitty one, about the size of a dime, went the way of the dinosaurs due to the cold. It could be that once they're bigger and burlier, they toughen up a bit, but I've learned my lesson - a somewhat pricey lesson. I'm always pushing the zone envelope here in my part of the Bay Area, but the loss of this expensive little turd-like object gave me pause. I think, if you want to be sure, grow your baby to a larger size before experimenting. Me, I'm going to make a nice little spot next to my pillow for the next one in my life. I don't have a greenhouse, so I'm going to have to rely on body heat . . .

Chris - THGA

If you keep the tuber warm constantly then it will probably survive.

They don't grow whilst below 10 degrees C, but I always keep them over winter in a minimally heated greenhouse which drops to 1 degree C at the coldest point of some winter nights. Not sure what happens if they actually get a frost though.