Will a. portodora do well as in indoor plant?

can it be done if placed by a bright window and kept moist. If you grow this plant indoors year-round, I would love to hear your comments. thanks.
http://davesgarden.com/guides/pf/showimage/261887/

I have grown it very well outdoors for about 6 years. You should be able to do fine with it in Richmond.
My method is, dig the tuber every spring (after it goes dormant in winter) and trim it up, removing any dead matter, and replant it. I get big plants in one season without having to overwinter indoors.

indoors, I'm interested in growing as a houseplant

may need more sun than you can give unless you have a very bright sunny window or skylight

Writing from Washington DC, not the Caribbean...

I have grown a. portora --related closely, I believe to a. portadora-- indoors over the winter quite successfully.

It was a good size plant --root extended 9-10" into the ground, plant 15" above ground, ~3" diameter-- in a large pot, with tapla's woody soil mix, and a saucer. I kept it on a radiator enclosure, so it stayed warm. The plant was exposed to a fairly bright, Western exposure, but with very little direct sunlight.

Over the course of the late fall and full winter, till mid April, the plant kept pushing out new leaves slowly but steadily. Started with just one, ended the winter with seven, had a great head start on outdoor life.

Clearly, the leaves grown indoors are very sensitive to full direct sun outdoors. I did not acclimate them and lost every one to sunburn --no big deal, since the warm, sunny weather prompted seven replacement leaves in little more than three weeks, multiples of that since.

Actually, as the breeder of the original plants, I can tell you that Portora and "portadora" are the same plant, or at least from the same cross (mine). Someone just corrupted my original name, 'Portora', perhaps to lead people to believe that it was a different plant from the original and genuine Portora. Some even call this same plant, "portidora". The true and only valid name of this plant is the name I gave it and published it under, which is Alocasia x portora, or for short, the Portora. The name comes from a combination of portei and odora, the specific names of the two parents.

LariAnn
Aroidia Research

thanks for the explanation, LariAnn. I will use portora from now on. Do u think I could grow indoors year round as a houseplant?

IMHO, you could grow Portora indoors year-round only if 1) you have a large (tall) semi-sunny window spot you can keep it in and 2) you have enough room for a plant that could reach 10 feet. Oh, and you need a large pot with a wheeled base because you will need to turn the plant each day to keep it from leaning to one side (towards the sun). Also, indoor conditions make this plant more susceptible to mites or other pests, so you will have to keep an eye out for them and take care of it right away if you see a problem developing.

For the record, I have developed a naturally dwarf sized "Portora" that in every way looks like a Portora, only it grows about 3 to 4 feet tall. Technically, the name of this plant should be "Porteana" because one parent is not odora. I have not yet released it, however.

LariAnn

thank you so much.

I hope I'm not mistaken that this is a.portora --note dried "flower" lower right.

LariAnn, here is a close-up of two "flowers" on another.

LariAnn, I had the bright window, large pot, and did rotate every week or so, but growth rate was not such that my 8.5' ceilings were a constraint. If there had been more sunlight --south-facing, for example-- I'm sure I would have seen a lot more growth, requiring more turning and more "head space".

Also had a pest issue, spider mites, as I recall, but horticultural oil spray seemed to address that well.

This message was edited Jul 5, 2010 6:49 PM

JPlunket,

Your plant pictured is not Portora, but is instead Alocasia gageana, one of the parents of the Calidora. If you have it labeled as Portora, you need to make a new label!

LariAnn

OK, good to know, though it was sold to me as portora. It clearly lacks the reddish venation of portora, seems to have smaller leaves and has less indentation beetween the points on the "ruffled" leaf edge.

Alistair,

I do it by using what my insect identification professor referred to as the "gestalt" method. This means, to me, the overall look of the plant and inflorescences, leaves, petioles, overall growth habit, pup and/or corm production, etc. A. gageana is a much smaller grower than A. odora, having comparatively small light green roundish leaves with slightly wavy edges and more main veins than you might expect from a small-leaved plant. It also produces a profusion of cormlets. A. odora, by contrast, has no wavy leaf edges, has much larger, darker green leaves that are more ovate or obovate in overall shape, with comparatively fewer main veins, considering the size of the leaf, and rarely produces corms, producing offshoots instead.

I will note, however, that I believe that A. gageana may, in fact, be a sport of A. odora, as A. cucullata may also be. This is based in part on my observation that seed grown from selfed A. gageana will occasionally produce a plant that looks like A. odora. My cross of A. gageana and A. odora produced a few seedlings that looked much like dwarf versions of A. cucullata. I even have a variety of A. odora that looks like a giant version of A. cucullata.

LariAnn

oh I bet the giant version of a. cucullata is gorgeous!

It is! Here's a link to my page about it:

http://www.aroidiaresearch.org/indodora.htm

LariAnn

Very nice looking plant LariAnn. I admire Alocasia cucullata.

Last year my Alocasia cucullata started to decline, thought it was sick and dying. But come the wet season it picked up and grew really well again. Now we're back into the dry season (winter) and it's declining again. All my other Alocasias are still going well though.

tropic, my cucullata looked pretty ratty during our past winter. maybe the same with yours?

LariAnn, I really like the giant cucullata.

What a fickle person I am. I decided I have a nice outdoor spot in which to plant my Portora. I am not up to fighting spider mites indoors. At present I am pretty spider mite free, don't want to invite them in.

just noticed there is a nice article today on Spider Mites by DGer Wind.