I've made it my mission to explore strange new plants,
to seek out new species,
to boldly garden with plants few have gardened with before.
Is that alright, Mr Spock?
Not many people are familiar with the genus Amorphophallus,
but to me it's intriguing and endlessly fascinating.
The snake plant is probably one of the easiest and most widely grown
of the genus Amorphophallus,
and, typically, they produce either one flower or one leaf.
The snake plant gets its name because of the pattern on the stem.
Now, the joy of these plants
is they're perennials, they die down in autumn
and you wait in spring to see will it flower?
Will it just produce a leaf?
These leaves can get to waist-high,
so they're like small palm trees
and they're really beautiful in their own right.
And the first time I flowered one of these,
I was so excited watching the bloom slowly open
that I stayed up late at night trying to capture it,
but eventually I fell asleep.
I was woken at four o'clock in the morning by this awful smell,
which I can only describe
as a complex blend of road kill, rotting fish and mature urine.
Now, this intense fragrance
is puffed into the air by the flower,
which warms up and it attracts blowflies and carrion flies
to do the pollination for it.
On the positive side, the smell only lasts for about four hours.
This is the 'Elephant Foot Yam'.
The flower spent three weeks as a bud
and it lasts for about three days.
If you look at the flower closely
you can see there's a bract surrounding the flower
and that's called the 'spathe'.
The central column has two ranks of flowers - male and female.
The female flowers are at the base. They emit the odour.
And the male flowers, which are covered in pollen, are above them.
When a blowfly enters the flower,
it crawls over the male flowers
picking up pollen as it goes to the female flowers
and then it transfers pollen to the next bloom,
and that's how pollination occurs.
And this is my bed of 'Elephant Foot Yam'.
Beautiful though they are,
like most things in my garden,
I grow them for food.
Now, if you plant potatoes,
you expect a return on a ratio of 1 to 12.
But with these you can double it.
They are serious food.
And it's not just ample, they're delicious.
They make the best chips ever.
These leaves will grow to 1.5m across by the end of a season
and it's in autumn when this leaf dies down that you harvest them.
Now, if you're thinking about growing them yourself,
you need to speak to somebody who understands these plants.
This is the edible variety.
It has a really nice smooth stem.
This is the wild uncultivated form from Queensland.
And look at the stem - it's really rough.
This one you don't eat.
This one you do.
It's important to get the right stock
before you start growing this as a food plant.
This is one of my favourites.
It's konjac, and that's spelt with a K.
This is a tiddler.
When they're older, about three years old,
they produce flowers which get up to waist- or chest-height.
They're spectacular.
Long stems.
And they also have that darker shade of fragrance, but it's only brief.
But the real value of this plant is as a crop.
If you're on a calorie-controlled diet,
this is a great plant because it fills you up with fibre -
you feel full, but there's next to no calories.
I reckon this is a fad food of the future.
The secret to success for growing Amorphophallus
is a warm climate, well-dug freely draining compost-rich soil
and water in dry weather.
If you're gonna grow them as food, make sure you get the right stock,
and then you can eat well and live long and prosper.