Tropicals & Tender Perennials: Need Alocasia ID, 1 by bwilliams

bwilliams wrote:
This look like a plant I told a friend to put into TC a few years ago. I am not sure if they did or not. It was a mutation off of Alocasia polly if I remember right. The plants were TC stock but one had this unusual look to them. I believe Steve is right a lot of times the labs get mutations some make it to the market. Also if the TC plants are not started back from original stock then they start making copies of copies this seems to be were the mutations can happen often. That is why most TC labs return back to mother stock after so many units are made if not everything starts looking mutated most are not attractive.

A friend of mine locally did a paper on this particular mutation the muculation of the leaves is believed to be from the plants cells trying to produce leaf structures on the wrong side of the leaves veination cells are acting like leaf cells. It is odd since there seems to be some order to it. Much like Xanthosoma albo marginata will almost always form cups at the ends of the mutated leaves. I gave him a plant of that for his research and most of the paper is dedicated to it.

Here is a picture of the plant I saw. These may in fact be different plants with similar mutations.