ABSTRACT:

My first experience with Alocasias was some ten years ago. A friend of mine in New Orleans had given me a community pot of ALocasia chanterieri corms. Most of these 3-4 leaf plantlets were well rooted and were planted soil separately into 4" plastic pots. There were, however, a few corms that had not sprouted so I replanted them and waited a rather long period for them to sprout. Soon, I grew impatient and decided to see what might be the delay. Upon unearthing the unsprouted corms, it was noticed they all had a rather thin but durable shell much resembling the coating of a dry kidney bean but not as thick.