Hi i purchased a plant a few days ago and.. the tag reads colocasia antiquorum lllustris but i don't thinks this plant is...hoping someone could help me out with this so i can care for it properly..thanks..tammy.
I don't think it's C. antiquorum 'Illustris' either. Could be one of the other fancy Colocasias, or it could be an Alocasia, or it could be something else again. It seems a little large for the fancy Alocasias. Photopro is the real expert at IDing this kind of plant - he'll surely be along sometime today and weigh in.
Thanks for your reply...I guess it looks big but it is sitting on top of a chest so it really is small...but the stem also has a zebra colouring??? thanks again..
The plant is too young to ID but I suspect it is a hybrid. If you will post sharp closeup photos of the petioles (the stalks that support the leaves), a photo of the top of a leaf so I can clearly count all the veins and examine the collective vein at the edge of the leaf along with one of the bottom of the leaf so I can do the same there I'll see what I can do. Steve
I found on possibility. Your plant appears to match to a photo of a tissue cultured plant sold by AgriStarts in Florida. They call it Alocasia 'Boa' but there is no known parentage. This company creates hundreds of thousands of plants each year in chemical soups using TC. Tissue culture is the asexual propagation of fragments of a suitable parent plant in order to produce clones of it in large quantity. In the process cells are grown in nutrient solutions in a laboratory until they form a mass of tissue. These then get different chemicals to induce roots and leaves. Once developed, these tiny plants are transplanted into a potting medium and are then sold to a commercial growers to be raised and sold to the commercial plant growing industry. Almost all plants found in discount centers and small nurseries are tissue cultured plants. This one is almost certainly a hybrid. Steve
I asked aroid botanist and Alocasia expert Pete Boyce to look at your photo. He tends to believe this is likely a hybrid created by crossing the true species Alocasia boa involving Alocasia portei. Without a very expensive DNA test there is no way to be certain.
