ABSTRACT:

In 1979, after returning to Manila from an exhaustive search on the island of Palawan, I visited the garden of Dr. Romeo Gutierrez, president of the Philippine Horticultural Society. Dr. Gutierrez maintains one of the world's leading collections of Aglaonemas, and on this occasion, he proudly displayed a newly discovered species from Thailand. It was, to put it mildly, the most beautiful Aglaonema I had ever seen. I Although he generously cut it and gave me the top, my collector's instinct had become so aroused, that I cancelled my planned search on the Philippine island of Samar, and instead, flew to Bangkok.