[Aroid-l] "Elephant Ear"??? Man, I hate that term!

From: Thomas.Croat at mobot.org (Tom Croat) on 2008.03.12 at 17:07:38(17165) Dear Steve: I quickly read through your page on Colocasia esculenta and found it very useful and thoughtful. Certainly those elements that you have there represent what falls in the parameters of C. esculenta but I am no expert on this Asian genus. I have never seen the very large plants grown by Brian Williams. They would appear to be twice as large as any plant I have seen anywhere in cultivation. Perhaps he is correct that it represents a tetraploid form. At least one of the two smaller forms are what has been called Colocasia esculenta var. antiquorum. Check the pictures in Exotica. Tom +More ________________________________ From: aroid-l-bounces at gizmoworks.com [mailto:aroid-l-bounces at gizmoworks.com] On Behalf Of ExoticRainforest Sent: Wednesday, March 12, 2008 2:15 AM To: Discussion of aroids Subject: [Aroid-l] "Elephant Ear"??? Man, I hate that term! Thanks for the assist to everyone! I've rewritten my web page on Colocasia esculenta which now reflects some of the information I've been sent. Still more to learn but I think I've got a better handle on this now. http://www.exoticrainforest.com/Colocasia%20esculenta%20large%20pc.html Steve Lucas www.ExoticRainforest.com > Steve I find that just about all plants labeled > commercially as Elephant ear are Colocasias esculenta. > The Xanthosomas are a bit harder to find and I have > rarely seen them commercially available. Yet many times I > have seen photos of Xanthosomas being used to sell > Colocasias as well as Alocasias. And the problem is not just in the nusery trade! I have seen photos of Alocasia and Xanthosoma being used interchangeably even in what are supposed to be identification guides. In fact, I had to make note of this fact in both my Aroideana articles. In one of my sources, a photo of Xanthosoma was used to illustrate a species account of Schismatoglottis! And when we consider popular books other than identification guides, the problem is not limited to Araceae, either. I've lost track of the number of times I've seen photos of seedling cabbage palm (Sabal palmetto), too young to have developed a trunk, incorrectly captioned as saw palmetto (Serenoa repens). With shenanigans like this going in on in paper publications, it is no wonder the identifications on eBay are such a mess. Jason Hernandez Naturalist-at-Large -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: http://www.gizmoworks.com/mailman/private/aroid-l/attachments/20080312/5e0c2fce/attachment.htm

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