[Aroid-l] Monstera question..

From: Steve at ExoticRainforest.com (ExoticRainforest) on 2008.06.23 at 02:42:39(17910) Helmet, great questions. If anyone has a good answer please post it! I am also very interested in this genus and have a fair number of species and often find them very confusing. As always, I want to hear from anyone with good info I can include on my pages and or to use as corrections! In fact, I was with Tom very briefly on Friday morning and had more questions but an unexpected "affliction" of food poisoning required us to come straight home. I will send him mail this week with more questions! And by the way, I was given a near fully adult specimen of Monstera adansonii over two years ago and it rooted immediately. No answers or speculation as to why. The thing has grown long vines that hang down almost two meters and I've given away multiple cuttings. Most of the original blades have dried in the past 6 months but new ones of equal size are now emerging. Steve +More Dear Leland, Dear Steve, Dear all... I have been always strongly interested in Monsteras, as I have got donations from various botanical collections in Europe. Since a couple of years I never had problems in vegetative propagation of various species. I have learned from Steve, based on Dr. Croats valuable research work that different forms, like M.acuminata, M.friedrichsthalii, M.obliqua, in fact are only synonyms of M.adansonii. They vegetatively look much different in juvenile and adult stage, but I do have to accept, what the true experts say and what is based on extensive research work. To my opinion there I do not see a difference between M.deliciosa and Monstera pertusa. If you have a juvenile M.deliciosa, it starts like M.pertusa and in the adult stage they look the same. Where is the difference? My all time favourit, - and in Europe extremely sought after for its beauty, - is Monstera deliciosa variegata (alba). These I also successfully propagate through cuttings. But I am still looking for the golden (yellow) variegatred form, which sometimes had been offered in the USA but never in Europe.( Maybe somebody can help). I once found a most beautiful pinnate leaved species climbing on a rock in the Botanical Garden of Darmstadt (Germany). I got a stem cutting and when I rooted it the juvenile leaves looked extremely strange for me until just recently I found the images of a herbaria species in tropicos. Now I know, it definetily is Monstera tenuis. It proofed to be a very invasive climber, but so far I have no adult leaf form yet. I found a couple of Monstera lookalikes in different (very old) collections, - esp. in Eastern Europe. But since nobody coukld tell me about their origin, I have difficulties to identify them. I do not know if thay were Rahidophora, Amydrium, Epipremnum etc. But the first steps I have done, clearifying between Raphidophora decursiva, Raphidophora tetrasperma and Epipremnum pinnatum. If anybody is interested I can send some images of my Monstera collection. -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: http://www.gizmoworks.com/mailman/private/aroid-l/attachments/20080622/aa2b8fd2/attachment-0001.htm

Note: this is a very old post, so no reply function is available.