Another user of this board (Sigtris) recently gave me a nice juvenile specimen of Anthurium faustomirandae Pérez-Farrera & Croat which is commonly known as Faustino's Giant Anthurium. During my research on the species I ran across several very interesting facts regarding the plant. First, numerous websites incorrectly spell the proper published scientific name of the species! You'll find it on the internet as Anthurium faustmirandae, Anthurium faustino-mirandae, Anthurium faustino-miranda, Anthurium faustinamarino, and sometimes Anthurium faustinomiranda. And there are likely other bad spellings on the web as well. I found this quote from Dr. Tom Croat of the Missouri Botanical Garden which clarifies the correct spelling: "I deliberately shorted the name to faustomirandae because Fausto is a shortened version of Faustino." Dr. Croat is one of the botanical authors of the species as well as a friend. You can go to either TROPICOS (Missouri Botanical Garden) or the International Plant Names Index (IPNI) to verify the correct spelling: http://mobot.mobot.org/W3T/Search/vast.html or http://www.ipni.org/index.html Be aware, if you type in any spelling other than the one at the top of this page you will get a "no return". The only accepted spelling is Anthurium faustomirandae Another interesting misconception is Anthurium faustomirandae is freqently sold as the "world's largest" Anthurium. It certainly is the largest cordate (heart shaped leaf) Anthurium found in Mexico where the plant is a native, but it is hardly the largest in the world. Growers have reported leaves of close to four feet (1.2 meters) but Anthurium regale from Peru can grow a cordate leaf up to 6 feet (1.8 meters). Many non-cordate leaf Anthurium species can produce leaves up to 8 feet (2.4 meters) in length including Anthurium cubense (see 1st photo below). The second photo below is the juvenile specimen given to us by Sigtris. In time it will grow substantially larger. If you'd like more detailed information on the species, you can find it here: http://www.exoticrainforest.com/Anthurium faustomirandae pc.html My thanks to Sigtris for the specimen. It is still young but hopefully in short order we can watch it produce some of "Faustino's Giant" leaves!
Not the only plant whose scientific name is often given the wrong spelling! Some others include: Acer pensylvanicum (wrong spelling "Acer pennsylvanicum") Carya illinoinensis (wrong spelling "Carya illinoensis") Stuartia species (wrong spelling "Stewartia")
Interesting Michael! I've run into quite a few species as well but this one seemed to win the prize on the most variations with a bad spelling. One reason I elected to post it here is UBC often comes up near the top of the search engines so hopefully I can help get the information out to the sites who are spelling it incorrectly via UBC! I even found one pseudo-scientific site with a bad spelling! Thanks for the input!
