With Edinburgh Zoo's Giant Pandas still failing to conceive a cub, green fingered experts at another capital tourist attraction have had far more luck with a huge plant.
Some 71 days after staff at the Royal Botanic Garden Edinburgh (RBGE) artificially pollinated their record-breaking Amorphophallus titanium -known as 'New Reekie' – it is producing some stunning results.
A bud - known as 'New Reekie 2' - grew out of the main plant which reaches an impressive 8.75 in the warmth of the greenhouse.
Horticulturists, such as Paula Maciejewska-Daruk, pictured, are continuing to monitor the growth of fruits from the plant.
There have some signs of rot and powder from an antifungal agent, the latter was placed by staff to keep it growing, there are still strong expectations New Reekie 2 will exhibit mature fruits in the months to come.
RBGE’s Glasshouse Supervisor Louise Galloway said: “We anticipate that the berry-like fruits will continue to expand in size until full maturity and possibly colour up more to reddish/orange tones. There are usually there are usually one or two seeds per berry and the seeds can vary in colour from yellowish orange to red.
“From speaking to other botanic gardens the seeds seem to take between four and nine month to develop, so we cannot give precise timings.”
“The fruits will persist on the stem and I would imagine the outer flesh will soften as they ripen: in the wild, they would want to be as appealing as possible to the hornbills so the birds eat them and distribute the seeds.”
New Reekie 2 is a bud from New Reekie, the world’s biggest and smelliest bloom came into flower – a first for Scotland given its climate.
It was pollinated during at night on August 1.
With their excellent work, perhaps the RGBE experts could assist the Pandas at the zoo.
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