My friend Leland Miyano is very well known in Hawaii for both his personal tropical garden as well all the public gardens he has designed. Leland was trained by world famous landscape expert Roberto Burle-Marx in Brazil and is one of the top experts in aroids, palms and cycads. He has authored or co-authored several books on Hawaiian plant species and is an incredible sculptor and painter who's work has been exhibited in several Hawaiian museum displays. Leland's personal garden is not open to the public but is featured in the June, 2009 issue of Martha Stewart Living Magazine. Leland uses only natural methods to grow his tropical plants and the photos I've personally seen over the past four years are stunning. If you strive to build a world class garden you will want to check out this issue. http://archives.starbulletin.com/2001/06/01/features/story2.html The photo was taken at the 2007 International Aroid Show and Sale in Miami where Leland was the guest speaker.
He has some rare specimens in there, including the seldom seem Philodendron adamantinum http://www.blueboard.com/pahatan/gambar/p_adamantinum_img3.htm He also has P. mello-barretoanum, and he once told this interesting story about it: Closer to home, I had to slay dragons in the form of Philodendron mello-barretoanum that grew into great serpentine pythons. They overtook large sections of my garden and I regretted having to slice and dice them with my chainsaw into massive piles of compostable carnage. I have several clumps remaining...but I needed to keep my vegetative dragons in check. This Meconostigma is one of my favorites, but it has intravaginal stipules that are persistent, large, and razor sharp. These dragons have teeth!
I suspect Leland has more collectable species than any other collector on the face of the globe! There are very few aroids I've asked about that he can't furnish photos from his garden. And most of the time he can all but quote the scientific texts!
I read the article and saw the pics...NICE! There are several Philos in the pics, including a clump of Philodendron mello-barretoanum in the distance in one pic. Leland says the clumps are huge and always threaten to take over the area around it.
Maybe if we catch a flight to Oahus we can bring some home but I'm not sure I would enjoy the thorns!
Speaking of "thorns", did you see the size of the spines on this P. undulatum? http://www.flickr.com/photos/briansbotanicals/2210447508/sizes/l/in/set-72157603768671582/ Almost looks like one of those spiny palms....that thing on eBay would catch a few hundred dollars....
I haven't actually seen them but I've read about them! Leland tells me they are BAD! I've been away from the computer for two days so sorry for the delay in answering.
I suppose the determination could be determined by whether or not you are just looking at them or actually handling them! By the way, I finally got a copy today of Martha Stewart's magazine featuring Leland. Really unfortunate they made him look like a caretaker in a garden instead of the botanical expert he is. The only photo of him had him standing with a broom in hand and they showed few of his truly awesome specimens.
So far I've kept my P. mello-barretoanum "dragons" in check by keeping them in large pots. The thorns are formidable but to me are one of the unique attractions of the plant. The trunks are so dense that either a razor sharp pruning saw or a chainsaw is necessary to cut them. In pots the roots grow down and if they can get into the ground, actually form guy cables to support the massive trunk. The root "cables" really tighten up just as if you had a turnbuckle on them! One thing I learned about this plant is that it does NOT like being submerged in water, not even partially, and not even just for a few hours. When hurricane Katrina hit us, the wind wasn't too awful, but the rain was prodigious. One of my mellos fell over so it was partially submerged just for a few hours. Any leaf that was partially or fully submerged became burnt as if exposed to a torch. This damage showed up within a few days of submergence. The plant itself did recover fully. LariAnn Aroidia Research
That's actually pretty interesting....I've sawed through other mecos before and they give way easily to even a small saw, so it would be interesting to find that this species has a denser stem. The aversion to water submersion also seems to differentiate this from P. bipinnatifidum, so it was probably correct to separate this one out from the complex. I have a P. mello but it's still a bit too small to test the chainsaw hypothesis ;-)
I even cut off a section of stem about a foot long and half-buried it longways in the same pot with the larger stem piece, and a shoot came off it from the bottom (buried) portion of the stem. The stem really is pretty hard and doesn't rot easily. The roots that grow out can be very thick as well, the thickest I've seen on any meco so far. LariAnn
