[Aroid-l] Alocasia Amazonica

From: ExoticRainforest <Steve at exoticrainforest.com> on 2009.11.19 at 16:00:31 I realize due to my mail a few are tired of this subject so I'mabout to wrap itup.  I do believe some that are interested in tissue culture and how itaffects the plants we grow might find these notes from Denis Rotolanteinteresting.  Another very interesting event this week was the USDAelected to change the information on its website to no longer indicateAlocasia xamazonica should be credited to André: http://www.ars-grin.gov/cgi-bin/npgs/html/taxon.pl?312551 If someone that reads Aroid l had anything to do with that I would liketo give you my thanks.  I am in hopes we can at the very least soon have a page on the IASwebsite which explains how all the commonly held misconceptionsregarding Alocasia Amazonica evolved and give credit to Salvadore Maurofor his creation. Steve www.ExoticRainforest.com Denis Rotolante wrote: I have on good sources that the parents ofAlocasia  x Amazonica were A. watsoniana and A. sanderiana. However,since lowii Grandis, lowii Veitchii, Watsoniana and longiloba have allbeen reclassified by taxonomists as one swarm all belonging to thespecies Alocasia longiloba, the parentage should be Alocasialongiloba and sanderiana. It does not make a difference unlessyou are trying to remake the hybrid.   I was growing Alocasia x Amazonica back inthe 1980's from tissue cultured liners. One of the plants exhibited newcharacteristics; heavier leaf substance, shorter petioles, bettershipping qualities and slower growth than the standard plants. It was asport from the standard Amazonica type created by genetic changes inTissue Culture, I called Polly. Scott Hyndmaninsisted I give a piece to him to put in culture. The rest is history.It became the standard of excellence in alocasias for many years. It'sstill hard to beat although the value has been degraded by the factthat it was over produced by chinese labs that flooded the market withknock offs.   I'm not sure by todays rules ofnomenclature that it can be called Alocasia Amazonica as somethinghappened in the lab spontaneously to change the genetic make up of theoriginal plant. I would leave that to someone else to figure out. Ijust call it Polly. From a separate email: .most people do not understand that TCforces changes in the genetic makeup of plants just as sexualreproduction. when TC does it we see a lot more of the bad ones becausethey survive long enough to mature. When nature does it... thedeleterious changes in the genes do not survive, only the favorableones make it to reproduce into the next generation.. If you could seethe number of bad genetic results from TC that have resulted indisaster...entire crops of defective plants in the foliage industryhave been produced. Sometimes however a positive change occurs givingus a Poly. --------------090605020002000507090608

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