Anthurium wellingae etc.

**&* W* <s*@symphyto.nl>**

Dear Tom,

A nice surprise to get a message from you through the forum! My two divisions of Anthurium wellingae are doing fine. The largest of the two has reached a height that safely allows me to cut it back and let the top end root at its own. When the base sprouts again, it’s my intention to set it aside for the Missouri Botanical Garden - by the time it is going again we will discuss a way to get it across the Atlantic without getting confiscated by overzealous custom officers ;-).

In the meanwhile I have been preparing some more sets of dried material from both divisions, which I will send to you later this year. I am doing the same with a couple of Anthuriums that I also received from Ecuagenera, but the names of which I either don’t trust or that simply can’t be right. Among these is a plant that I got from them in 2007, labelled as Anthurium andraeanum but which, now I am able to compare it to true A. andraeanum, must be something else. It’s leaves are quite alike at first sight, but its spathes and spadices are much different. The pink spathes are a bit bigger than in the true species and are lacking the elevated ‘ridges’ of the latter, and its spadices are not off-white near their base and clear yellow at the top, but light pink throughout and, upon aging, an almost burgundy red. Pretty remarkable is the pleasant and sweet raspberry-like fragrance of the inflorescences, whereas my true A. andraeanum is completely scentless. Cataphylls a!
 re persistent, and it’s curved stems (the longest of which now about some 80-100 cm) are slowly branching from (near) the base. The plant is much too unwieldy to be a commercial hybrid, but I have often been wondering whether this can’t be some sort of natural hybrid?

Other plants I’d like to consult you about and which I am collecting and drying material of, are a specimen that I bought as A. watermaliense but which spathes are much too narrow; a plant labelled as A. rubioanum, but which certainly isn’t that species (but could be A. bredemeyeri); a specimen that was bought as A. arisaemoides, but which median leaflets show a collective vein that is persistently different from what I see in my other two plants of A. arisaemoides, and finally a monster of which I have never seen an inflorescence but which certainly can’t be the A. flavolineatum that is written on the label it came with. It will take a while before I have dried all material that I’d like you to see, so I will send you a number of pictures over the next couple of weeks.

Collecting Anthuriums is fun and comes with surprises, but getting their names right is a challenge in itself!

All the best,

Simon M. Wellinga
Heerenveen, The Netherlands / EU
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