Colocasia 'Royal Hilo'

Found these 2 at Blue Moon Gardens near Edom, TX today. They are a little shopworn, but I think the interesting thing is the difference in the stem color. Brian commented on this difference elsewhere. I waited too late to take the pics and the flash has washed out the color, but I hope you can see the difference of stem color in this first pic.

Oh, and I need pronunciation help here - is it 'hee-low' (like the Hawaiian city) or 'high-low' ?? I say it like the city.

This message was edited Nov 2, 2007 7:56 PM

Here's another pic from the 'back' side

last pic

That purple is fantastic! Nice find.

It is pronounced hee-low. I believe the plant was put into Tissue culture as a streaked stem variegated looking colocasias. When in TC it seemed to revert into two seperate forms the maroon stem form and the green stem form. Both are the same plant just different forms. If you get a lot of them you will also find the streaked form with the bloted leaves usually most of the blotching is on the back of the leaf. This is a new release from Dr Cho a taro breeder in Hawaii.

Thanks Brian!

I think the difference in plants propagated by tissue culture is fascinating.

So, would you recommend keeping one of each? Moodene gets one and we get one, but I am planning to repot them tomorrow and was thinking a big pot? I am going to greenhouse them this winter to get more growth, or is that a bad idea?

I personally kept one of each out of the ones I grew. The maroon stem the green stem and the variegated form. All if not most of the pups will be identical to it's parent plant. You could repot them into a larger pot but you should keep the temps warm to get them to grow if not repotting them would not do much difference in size with out the warmer temps. .

Love the purple stem form, I've not seen any real pics of this one yet, very pretty. Thanks for the attention to the backside (lol) of the leaves, very nice

This is a picture of my ROYAL HILO (back side) Jerry

lol, how great, lovin' the backsides, that really is a pretty leaf, Jerry