Tropicals & Tender Perennials: Will my African Mask multiply in a pot?, 1 by ExoticRainforest

ExoticRainforest wrote:
This may appear complicated but if you follow closely it is easily understood. I am including a link with much more detail for any that want to learn about Alocasia Amazonica.

Alocasia Amazonica is a name contrived by Miami postman Salvador Mauro during the 1950's. Salvador owned a very small nursery in Miami which he called the Amazon nursery. Alocasia do not exist naturally in the Amazon but are found naturally in SE Asia and the surrounding area.

The name Alocasia x amazonica apparently was contrived and appeared on page 326 of a Florida State Horticultural Society publication in 1953 in an article entitled Cultivation of the Genus Alocasia in Florida. It has been continued on a variety of websites including the National Botanic Garden of Belgium but several taxonomists have said the name is an invalid name.

According to researcher Rafaël Govaerts with the Royal Botanic Garden Kew in London, he has elected to indicate the name Alocasia x amazonica Reark, Proc. Florida State Hort. Soc. 20: 326 (1953) is an invalid name (nom. inval.) and as a result Alocasia x amazonica is no longer in use on the Royal Botanic Garden Kew's websites.

This confusion evidently dates back to a hybrid first described by botanist Éduard François André (1840-1911), the plant he described as Alocasia mortefontanensis that used the same parentage as Salvador Mauro to create his now popular hybrid but Andre never called it Alocasia x amazonica as is often reported. Instead André's hybrid Alocasia mortefontanensis was published in Revue Horticole in 1891. The plant was originally crossed by the brothers Chantrier who were gardeners at Mortefontaine. André published the plant using only the name Alocasia mortefontanensis, it was more than 50 years later when anyone elected to associate Salvador's name with the same plant by adding an "x" in the center of his name.

Noted Alocasia botanist Alistair Hay has written the use of the name Alocasia x amazonica would be in contravention to several established rules and as such should be abandoned.

According to Bill and Denis Rotolante who are friends of both LariAnn and myself the name Alocasia Poly or Alocasia Polly is a name they originally created as a result of a small stable form of Alocasia Amazonica. The two plants are one and the same. Poly is simply smaller and they are not distinctly different plants. The name Poly was derived because at first Bill thought the smaller plant may have an extra chromosome making it a polyploid plant. That was later learned to be incorrect. All of this is explained in this link in greater detail. The spelling "Polly" was changed by a tissue culture lab in Florida because they felt that spelling was more marketable.


http://www.exoticrainforest.com/Alocasia micholitziana pc.h...

Sorry if this appears to be over the heads of collectors but all of this has been well researched by a number of members of the International Aroid Society with the help of several aroid botanists and taxonomists.

Steve

This message was edited Jun 2, 2010 10:19 AM

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This message was edited Jun 2, 2010 10:52 AM