Tropicals & Tender Perennials: Elephant Ear ID confirmatio please, 1 by bwilliams

bwilliams wrote:
Steve this is a great article. I am not sure how much info I can add. As for specifics on this group. I have some personal theories on certain plants or clones of species. I for one find that Colocasia fontanesii is sterile and cannot produce seed it's pollen seems to be sterile as well. Which would tell me it is not a true species. I have not yet tested this with the slightly different clone out of Hymalayans called Colocasia Dark Water. Their is one species called Colocasia lihengiae that seems very similar to fontanesii and maybe fontanesii is a old hybrid off of this species. If so I would guess that the parientage would be Colocasia lihengiae X Colocasia esculenta Dark stems clone.

The same goes for Colocasia illustrius. My personal thoughts of this is that Colocasia illustrius is a hybrid between Colocasia antiquorum X Colocasia jenningsii or heterochroma. I have no proof of this but the combination of leaf and flowers looks to be very similar. And the fact that illustrius is complete sterile seems to tell me it is a hybrid.

These are of course my own person thoughts on this and I have no scientific proof that this is true. I would guess some genetic testing could show if this is possibly the origin of these two plants. It seems that the species have been crossed from time to time and that their is some blurred lines on some of these species. I have seen Colocasia Fallax growing beside of Affinis and plants of what looks to be hybrids of the two that grow right with them. They look similar to Col. heterochroma which shares similarities of both species.