Alocasia Amazonica, the Banta's reply re Andre

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Hi Steve,

I don't know much about "A. x amazonica" though it appears not to be a validly published botanical name. I am not aware of the name going back before the 1950's, though the hybrid plant might well go back to the 19th century (and been re-made later), as there were many hybrids made then. Plants have sometimes been given completely erroneous geographic epithets, like the Asian Lycoris africana, and the African Nerine sarniensis, to take two examples from Amaryllidaceae,  but I think the origin being the name of the nursery may be correct in this case.  IMO the IAS as ICRA for aroids should publish a determination that "Alocasia x amazonica" is the correctly cultivar Alocasia 'Amazonica'.

By the way, the Alocasia nobilis your ?Belgian correspondent refers to is an illegitimate name because of the prior A. nobilis Hallier f.  (an unrelated Sumatran species).  'Nobilis' cannot be used as a cultivar epithet in Alocasia (for a form of A. sanderiana) because of the existence of Alocasia nobilis Hallier f., if my interpretation of the ICNCP is correct.

I remember agonizing over whether to include A. watsoniana in the A. longiloba complex. He hasn't grown enough of the variable plants in the complex, I suspect. What look like different species in cultivation become much more blurred if one looks (at more variability) in the wild. I suspect the cultivated big watsoniana should also be given the status of cultivar, Alocasia 'Watsoniana'.  Many of these problems with and unending arguments/discussions about "horticultural-botanical" hybrids and species can be simply circumvented by making them cultivars. 

Alistair