-----Original Message-----
Sent: Monday, May 29, 2006 3:36 PM
To: aroid-l@gizmoworks.com
Subject: [Aroid-l] Swamp Philo. sp. from near Iguazu Falls.
Dear All,
Every now and then this incident crosses my mind, and it still bothers
me
all these years later.
This note was sparked by someone mentioning the late Fred Fuchs, who
collected extensively in S. America back in the 'good old days', and
often
took groups of orchid and aroid enthusists collecting w/ him. Many
years
ago, when I was just getting started in aroids, I met a woman here in
WPB
who had returned from collecting w/ Fred just a year or so previously,
she
described being on the bus to the famous Iguazu falls, when along a
flat,
straight road BEFORE getting to the falls, in a cow-pasture behind a
barbed-wire fence, she saw what could be mistaken for a huge stand of
Xanthosoma. On closer inspection (after she managed to get the bus to
stop!) the plants turned out to be a swamp-growing species of
Philodendron .
The area in which this dense stand of plants was growing, which was
obviously sometimes flooded, was dry at the time, and the 'soil'
consisted
of clay baked by the sun to the consistincy/hardness of red brick. She
had
to get the bus driver to assist her in digging three plants out of this
hard
and rock-like 'soil'. From memory, the plants had long yellow
petioles,
and 'carried' about 5 leaves. The leaves were sagittate, with the
anterior
lobe noticably shorter than the longer, wide-spread hind lobes, and the
blades were carried with the anterior lobe pointing down, the hind lobes
up.
They were not 'self-heading', but were none the less very compact,
short-rhizomed plants w/ a thick, short and elongate rhizome the color
of an
American sweet-potato, orange. It seemed that the plants could store
food
reserves in this form of rhizome.
The woman had three plants, and resisted all my efforts to trade or buy
one
from here, she made a comment that she would prefer to let them die
before
she would part w/ one. During a visit a few years later, she had done
just
that, allowed them to die. The pots stood empty save the
remanants/shells
of their rhizomes.
I discussed this w/ the late and great Dr. Monroe Birdsey, and would you
believe he too had seen and collected the exact plants at the exact spot
during his visit to the falls! I BELIEVE he thought that they might be
called P. 'dubium', but he was not certain.
If anyone can offer some/any information on the ID of these plants, or
better yet actually have a plant, I`d love to hear from them!
Good Growing!
Julius
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