Stromanthe sanguinea "Tricolor"

I had one of those fun mornings. We've got a cold front blowing through, so I spent much of the AM right here trying to ID a plant. It's a plant that someone convinced our retail folks that it's a ginger--Peppermint Ginger, they call it. The nursery people put some in a big pot in the landscape office atrium. I suppose to acquaint the landscape sales-design staff with it. Fortunately, or not, I recognized the plant.

My first wife's father was a house plant grower in Southern California and for the 2 years preceding his death, I was his salesman. This was one of the plants he grew; the 1902 edition of Bailey's "Cyclopedia of Horticulture" [our only reference] called it Maranta tricolor.There are significant differences between the Marantaecae and Zingberaceae families.

It's no longer Maranta tricolor--and, I guess, hasn't been for a long time; at least I didn't find any listings for that name. But I sure took the grand tour of the Calathea and Maranta genuses looking for, first, photos and, second, plant societies. I found no photos that resembled the plant and no plant societies. Finally it dawned on me [duh] to go to Dave's Garden's data base and search on "Marantaecae" because that data base includes family names and many, if not most, entries have pictures.

Well, it did, and the match was simple. Like, Eureka! It's new moniker is "Stromanthe sanguinea 'Tricolor'." So I added my picture to the data base. If you'd like to see it, it can be accessed at

http://davesgarden.com/pdb/showimage/61454/

The cultural requirements for the plant are scary--no sun, no temps below 60, lots of humidity. A ginger it's not. But stunning under the right conditions, it is.

I don't know if there's a picture of it in A2Z [mine's at work], but if it is it will be interesting to see what it has to say about it; there's also a plain-jane green one with darker green markings.

Island Jim
Southwest Florida
27.0 N, 82.4 W
Zone 10a
Minimum 30 F [-1 C]

---------------------------------------------------------------------
Support hort.net -- join the hort.net fund drive!
http://www.hort.net/funds/

Other Mailing lists | Author Index | Date Index | Subject Index | Thread Index