About Amorphophallus kiusianus (Makino) Makino
The tuber of Amorphophallus kiusianus is depressed globose, up to about 20 cm in diameter and 12 cm high. Japanese specimens show no offset development, while mainland Chinese specimens have a few sessile, globose offsets. It has a solitary leaf. The petiole is glossy, dirty olive - green or grayish green, with narrowly oval or irregular whitish or very pale greenish spots and numerous tiny dark green dots. It measures up to about 65 × 4 cm and is glabrous. The leaf blade is 60 - 90 cm in diameter, with winged rachises distal from basal main branchings. Leaflets are bright green adaxially with a narrow pale violet margin, narrowly elliptic to lanceolate, 6 - 20 × 3 - 4.5 cm, with an undulate margin and a moderately to long acuminate apex. The inflorescence is solitary and long pedunculate. The peduncle has the same color as the petiole, 40 - 100 cm long (up to about 120 cm in fruit) and 1.5 - 4 cm in diameter. The spathe is dark greenish, greenish pinkish, or glossy dark purplish - brown on the outside, with small, whitish spots and a narrow, reddish violet line on the margin. Inside, it is pale pinkish with a purplish base, purplish and greenish, or entirely dark brown, with or without a greenish margin. The base outside is dark green or dark greenish - brown, with small, rounded whitish spots and blackish green veins, triangular with a rounded base, 9 - 25 × 4 - 13 cm, and is shallowly or clearly constricted between the base and the limb. The limb is first oblique, then reflexes and bends downward, with a reflexed or undulate margin. The base inside is dark purple with numerous ± distant, conic warts, occasionally with small, whitish spots. The spadix is sessile or subsessile, 9 - 22 cm long, shorter than, equal to, or longer than the spathe. The female zone is slightly conic, 1 - 4 × 0.5 - 2 cm. The ovary is bright pale green, ± obovoid, angulate in cross - section, about 2.5 mm high and 2 mm in diameter, 2 - loculed. The style is bright pale green or dark brown, nearly absent, about 0.2 × 1 mm, bifurcate at the apex. The stigma is pale greenish gray, shallowly or distinctly 2 - lobed - sinuous, slightly oval in cross - section, about 0.8 mm high and 1.5 mm in diameter, minutely papillate. Staminodes between the male and female zones are isolated or in groups of 2 - 4, or together with functional stamens as part of the lowermost male flowers. The male zone is cylindric or slightly obconic, 2.5 - 4.5 × 0.5 - 2 cm. Male flowers consist of 4 or 5 stamens. The appendix is fusiform - conic or narrowly fusiform, 4 - 16 cm long, 1 - 3 cm in diameter near the base, with an acute or obtuse apex, entirely blackish or with scattered, tiny green spots, or entirely dark greenish, glossy, glabrous or with shallow depressions, base grooved, otherwise naked or with scattered, thin, violet - brown hairs emerging from depressions. Pollen is striate - areolate and released in strings. The infructescence is cylindric, 5 - 22 × 3 - 4.5 cm, sometimes with the dried spathe base remaining. Berries are glossy, starting as bright green, turning pinkish purple and finally deep blue, rounded or oval, about 1 × 0.8 - 1 cm, 2 - seeded. Seeds are oval in longitudinal section, flattened on one side, about 8 × 6 × 4 mm, with a black, moderately glossy, minutely rugulose testa.
