Re: [aroid-l] Amorphophallus FAQ part 3

Hi Randy,
I'm a little confused about your perspective of classifying anything as 
indoors or outdoors, even though that may make perfect horticultural sense to 
a specific grower in a specific climate.  Basically, they were all born 
outside ... someplace.
The exact reverse perspective, that some of us face is that we grow 
everything indoors.  In an apartment, with natural window light and 
fluorescent lights, amorphophallus wake up when they want and go dormant when 
they want and basically when they are growing you give them light and water, 
and when they are dormant you stop watering and put them in a closet, or some 
such place to rest.  I know many people that have successfully grown amorphs 
for years with this routine, although probably only the more common species 
such as A. konjac and bulbifer.  Now that some of us grow more uncommon 
species with the same culture in mind, we find one of the major problems is 
not dormancy or season, but whether they want or need a wet or dry dormancy, 
so people tend to lose their tubers from drying up or rotting.  Given the 
above basic premise, some of us do employ other horticultural options such as 
putting plants outdoors (back yard/rooftop/fire escape) in the summer - we 
call this "sending our plants to summer camp".  However, that implies that 
they are growing in the summer and dormant in the winter which we all know is 
not the case for many of the "tropical" growers where season are erratic.  
It would never occur to us that people in Florida or California would have a 
problem growing anything because they have more cultural options than we do, 
although I know many people in both states who would not dream of growing a 
plant indoors.
Just a slightly different perspective for your FAQ's.  I was once asked to 
edit a horticultural encyclopedia where 90% of the information was geared to 
growing in a "stove house" in England and I was to translate that to 
horticulture in the US.  They gave up on the project because it made no sense 
unless I did a complete rewrite.
Good luck - Michael
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