Re: Which back issues??

From: "Peter Boyce" Boyce at pothos.demon.co.uk> on 2000.06.12 at 19:49:04(4735) Hi Jack Sorry to cause you confusion when I hoped to help! There is a bit of a mess in cultivation surrounding the genera related to Rhaphidophora. While most folks recognize Monstera deliciosa, the other genera (Rhaphidophora, Rhodospatha, Epipremnum, Scindapsus, Amydrium, Anadendrum, Alloschemone) are frequently cultivated under the wrong names. The plant you grow with white variegated leaves isn't a member of the genus Rhaphidophora (restricted to the old world tropics and defined by having fruits with many small starchy seeds) but is a member of the genus Monstera (restricted to the tropical Americas and defined by having fruits with few, largeish, starch-less seeds. There are couple of books you should try to get. One is The Genera of Araceae by Mayo, Bogner & Boyce published in 1997. It's available through the Society and while not cheap is a complete guide to the genera with many illustrations (but won't help you to name species). Another book you should try to get is Deni Bown's Aroids - Plants of the Arum family, which is due to be published in a much expanded second edition in September this year. Naming plants to species is often quite a time consuming job and is hampered by most of the literature for the task being published for the scientific market in the form of revisions of genera. However, most of the folks writing the species-level revisons of Araceae are subscribers to aroid-l (Tom Croat, Wilbert Hetterscheid, myself) and often a request on the site will illicit replies from these folks. Hope this helps some Pete +More ps You should also dent your credit card and order the entire back run of Aroideana - it's an incredible source of info.

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