RE: [Aroid-l] Unknown Philo from hawaii

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Dear Russ: 

 

            It depends on if you are really talking about elements of Philodendron hederaceum or if you have something else.  P. micans and P. miduhoi are certainly synonyms.  There are vaguely recognizable subspecies which I treated but you would scarcely notice the differences.  Alternatively you must remember that you may be seeing only two or three varients of something that is infinitely variable throughout its range.  Collect a plant from Mexico, Nicaragua, Colombia and Brazil and take them back to Florida and you might be able to distinquish each of them indefinitely but remember that if you collected from all the populations throughout the range of the species you would be hard pressed to find any way place where you could draw the line between one population and the next.  That is the nature of evolution and also the nature of horticultural elements that you are looking at only small bits of a spectrum.  Now, of course it is also possible that you really are dealing with misdetermined plants.

 

Tom