I just thought I would share. It was indoors until day two of blooming, then the smell was a bit too much and I had to bring it outdoors. Flies immediately found it...literally, as I was walking out the door to set it on the front porch. Within 10 minutes, there was about 20 flies on it. I had made a video of all the activity, but it is in an .AVI format and could not be downloaded. : ( This plant started out as a single stalk about two years ago. This is the first year when I have been blessed with multiple flowers. Each flower is about 12 inches/30 cm across.
Daniel, The .AVI movie is 8.4MB, 22 seconds long. Done with a Canon digital camera and a Macintosh computer. QuickTime software. It easily converts to most PCs, as I send small videos to other folks with Microsoft Windows-based PCs. For those folks with a slow dial-up connection, it may not be worth the wait to see, but for those with a high-speed connection, it will download in less than a minute. I don't know how much capacity your server is able to handle, but instructional videos (pruning, bonsai care, root trimming, pollination and propagation techniques, etc.) and things like this video might be a nice addition to the website's capabilities. Mark
My computer told me that "the file in which it is stored is offline..." So I'll have to wait till you are online I suppose... Ed
My 12-year-old son noticed that the flies were actually laying their eggs in the center of the flower. Sure enough, there were newly hatched fly larvae wiggling around. The diversity of life on this planet is very interesting. What purpose could fly larvae serve in a flower? Is it for the benefit of the flower, the flies, or both? One thing for sure is that things happen in nature for a reason. We may not understand why, but there is always a reason.
Mark, are yours in full sun, shade or what, mate? I don't think some of mine are getting enough light to flower... Ed
Full southern exposure sun...however, it's Michigan sun. Not the intensity of Australian sun. The flower buds started to show up at the middle of September. The weather was getting too cold overnight and I had to bring the plant indoors. It is still receiving a southern exposure but indoors...a lot less light, but it certainly didn't stop the flower buds from developing. I used a fair amount of slow-release fertilizer this year...perhaps this may explain the abundance of flowers.
Eh, that's a bizarre thing to happen. It is an attachment, like the thousands of images on the forums. It does have to be downloaded to your desktop or opened with an external application, though.