Re: Alocasia nebula & A. reginae
- Subject: Re: Alocasia nebula & A. reginae
- From: P* B* <p*@googlemail.com>
- Date: Mon, 26 Jan 2009 06:45:18 +0800
|
Hi Marek,
Yes you photos are correctly identified. These
species are certainly closely related by readily distinguishable. Alocasia
nebula is a large plant, up to 70 cm when fully grown. The petiole are erect to
erecto-spreading, with the lamina held at downwards angle to the petiole. Leaf
colour is medium grey with darker areas and the leaves can get up to 45 cm x 25
cm. Although nebula is now pretty well established in cultivation, its exact
origins are obscure. In the mid-1990s Josef Bogner and myself and independently
Alistair Hay, saw this plant growing at the Semenggoh Botanical Research Centre
in Kuching, Sarawak and none of us could identify it. We independently asked the
staff where the plant originated (since it was clearly occurring at Semenggoh as
a planted, rather than locally indigenous species) but none was
sure.
Anyhow, it, along with most of the more spectacular
Sarawak Alocasia, remained undescribed until Hay's revision of 1998 (when it was
treated as insufficiently known and called just Sp. A) and finally received a
formal name in 2000. The remarkable thing is that it is still unknown in the
wild. Certainly we have looked for it with some vigour, finding some spectacular
new species along the way, but as yet with no success for nebula. The group it
belongs too are often associated with particular geologies in very specific
localities (i.e., reginae on the Mulu limestone, reginula on limestone in E
Sabah, melo on ultrabasics in E Sabah, venusta on the Niah limestones, etc.) and
thus it is very probable that nebula is found only in a very specific place on a
particular geology. The similar case was A. reginula, which has been in
cultivation for a long time but was only found in the wild very recently on the
Tabin limestones in E Sabah.
Alocasia reginae is a small plant (max to 25 cm)
with the leaves held in more-or-less a rosette and with the lamina in almost a
straight line to the petiole. The leaf surface tends to be deep blue-grey with
darker veining and with the backs of the leaf very deep red-purple, with the
colour stopping abruptly at the top of the petiole. It is abundant on limestone
outcrops in swampy forest at Mulu and perhaps elsewhere in NE
Sarawak.
I can't better your picture of nebula, but I will
post one of reginae in a separate email.
Very best wishes and Happy Chinese New
Year
Pete
|
_______________________________________________ Aroid-L mailing list Aroid-L@www.gizmoworks.com http://www.gizmoworks.com/mailman/listinfo/aroid-l
- References:
- Alocasia nebula & A. reginae
- From: &* A* &*
- Alocasia nebula & A. reginae
- Prev by Date: Re: Philo I can't ID!
- Next by Date: great Photos from Joep Moonen!
- Previous by thread: Alocasia nebula & A. reginae
- Next by thread: Update on Joep Moonen