Reply from my partner, a horticulturist at RBGE who works with the titan arum: "It's green so it's almost certainly is doing some photosynthesis but almost all

Reply from my partner, a horticulturist at RBGE who works with the titan arum: "It's green so it's almost certainly is doing some photosynthesis but almost all of the energy is coming from the corm. There's enough energy in the corm to produce a flower, seeds and fruit; this can take 9 months, and during that period there's basically just a stump, no leaf. The corm depletes vastly after flowering. The titan arum we have is so big it seems to manage to have enough energy to produce a leaf again after flowering. Most just die after flowering and fruiting."