The Variegated Thumb

Aglaonemas are known for their patterned foliage with several shades of green, white and silver.  In Thailand, breeders are constantly creating new Aglaonemas with pink and red in the leaves.  Personally, I’m not a fan of these hybrids and I don’t collect any of those.  These hybrids get their red coloration from a natural species, Aglaonema rotundum.

My collection is made up of the more natural-looking Aglaonemas, even though many of them are hybrids.  One of my most recent finds is a variegated form where there are white patches overlaying the green pattern.  The plant was sold to me as variegated Aglaonema ‘Silver Queen.’  However, the leaf pattern does not match the common ‘Silver Queen’, which has lanceolate leaves with a primarily silver coloration and thin streaks of dark green mixed in.

Most Aglaonemas have green petioles (stems).  Some have white and then there are a few that have either pink or russet.  I believe that russet is a mix of pink and green – kind of a brown potato color.  I think these petioles are really neat looking and this is the first Aglaonema I have had with the russet petioles.  (See the image below.)  This is yet another clue that this plant does not come from the common ‘Silver Queen’, but from something else entirely.  Most likely this mystery will never be solved for me.

There are many Aglaonemas in my office building, maintained by a company that checks on them regularly and switches the plants out when they start to look ratty.  There is one Aglaonema that I have admired for a while and I recently got a stem of it to grow myself.  I have no idea what the name is.  The distinguishing features are the dark coloration of the leaves, which are somewhat lanceolate.  It looks similar to a plant I saw at the IAS show called ‘Shades.’  The lighter shades of green are also in an unusual pattern.

The last recent addition to my Aglaonema collection is one which grows as a creeping rhizome, which is different from my other Aglaonemas, which grown on an upright stem.  This plant was sold to me as Aglaonema costatum f. immaculatum.  I sent a photo to my friend, Peter Boyce, who is a career taxonomist in Malaysia.  He told me the plant is actually Aglaonema brevispathum, a member of the Chamaecaulon section, which has this characteristic growth habit.  He studied these plants in the field from Myanmar through Thailand to Cambodia, Laos, and Vietnam, in lowland dry dipterocarp forest, often along on river banks.   How lucky am I to have Peter to answer my questions!?!  That’s one of the great things about the IAS.  There are people who have very extensive knowledge and a great willingness to share that knowledge.

I was a little worried that I would have trouble growing this particular plant, since it differs from the ones that I know grow well in my care.  But it seems to be doing well, enjoying the environment of my greenhouse and putting out some new leaves.

I have compiled a list of some of the velvetiest aroids there are.  Not velvet Evlises, velvet aroids.  When I speak of velvet aroids, the main criteria is the feel of the leaves.  Some people describe a wide range of textures as being “velvety,” while others notice small differences in the textures that make them more “satiny” or more like velour.  The feel of the most velvety aroids is made possible due to tiny hairs which reside on the upper leaf surface.  Botanically speaking, this is referred to as velutinous (velvety) adaxial (upper) surfaces.

Most of my blog posts include pictures of my own plants, or at least pictures that I took while visiting some place with nice plants.  This post is an exception.  A majority of the pictures are being used, with permission, from various friends in the International Aroid Society.  Many of these are from Enid Offolter, of NSE Tropicals.  (By the way, Enid probably has the best selection of these plants available for sale.)  Since I don’t own many of these plants, I have to rely on other people’s pictures and descriptions for classifying them as velvety or something similar.  Which brings me to the secondary criteria for being on my velvet aroids list – which is appearance.  Most (but not all) of these plants have an iridescence when you look at the leaves, due to their velvetiness.  It is very prominent on some plants.  Sometimes this feature doesn’t always show up well in photographs, but there are quite a few photographs where you can see this.

I decided that I would concentrate on two genera only for this post – Anthurium and Philodendron.  There are certainly other aroids with velvety textures, although I do believe the most velvety aroids are from these two genera.  I have mentioned others at the end, but I know that when I depart from these two genera, I have no chance of being comprehensive, especially with the gazillion cultivars of Colocasia and Caladium, which are somewhat velvety.

I should also mention that some of these plants change texture with maturity.  For instance, Philodendron hederaceum is quite velvety in juvenile form, but eventually becomes glossy.  Other species only attain the velvety texture when they reach maturity.  Many times it is difficult to tell the differences in these different species, hybrids and cultivars, especially when you are switching back and forth between different websites.  It is a little easier to compare them here, with them all pictured together.  That was part of my impetus for writing this post.  In some cases, seeing their pictures side by side makes you wonder how they are different species!  (see Anthurium crystallinum and Anthurium clarinervium)  But there are distinct differences as you train your eye and begin to look at other parts of the plant, beyond the shape and colors of the leaves.  Enid Offolter has some expertise and tells me that the cross section of the petioles (3, 4 or 5 sided) can tell you a lot about these two plants and the various hybrids.  There is a really good discussion (with photos) about identifying the differences between Anthurium angamarcanum and Anthurium marmoratum here.

And now, on to the list…

 Velvet Anthuriums

Anthurium angamarcanum

If you clicked on that link above, you have already seen some photos of individual leaves of Anthurium angamarcanum, but below you can see a mature plant in all its glory.  Beautiful.

Anthurium besseae

I am not really familiar with this plant and haven’t heard of anyone growing it in cultivation.  I only found a couple of websites with information on this plant.  Since one of them is Tropicos, I know that it is a valid species.

Anthurium clarinervium

This species is very hard for me to separate from Anthurium crystallinum (lower down in the post).  So, how do I know which one is which?  Well, here’s my method.  If the veins on the leaves are so vibrantly white/gold that they are burning your retinas…  that’s clarinervium.  (Did you click that link?  I did warn you.)  If the veins are vibrant but your retinas aren’t in pain, more likely crystallinum.

Anthurium UNKNOWN

This Anthurium has special leaves. They look like the skin of an elephant in their rough texture.  At the same time, they look soft.  See what I mean?  There is a plant in the Alocasia genus with similar looking leaves, but they are very stiff and not velvety.  That plant is Alocasia ‘Maharani.’

Anthurium crystallinum

This is one of the few velvet plants that I own.  I just bought it at the IAS show and sale in Miami last September.  It is still a small plant, but it will one day be a huge and beautiful specimen (if I can keep it alive and happy).  It definitely does not loose it’s velvetiness with maturity.  In fact, this is probably one of those plants which becomes more velvety with age.

Sometimes this plant produces leaves with a closed sinus.  The sinus is the upper opening on the heart-shape.  A picture of Anthurium crystallinum with a closed sinus is shown on the Exotic Rainforest website, here.

Anthurium ‘Mehani’

As far as I understand, this plant is a cultivar of the species Anthurium crystallinum.  That just means that there were some desirable traits of a certain plant and it was propagated (probably cloned via tissue culture) so that all of the offspring would have the same traits.  It is usually just labeled Anthurium ‘Mehani’, but should really be labeled Anthurium crystallinum ‘Mehani.’

Anthurium forgetii

This plant is very uncommon in cultivation, but I did find a couple of nice photos.

Anthurium hoffmannii

This is not a common plant in cultivation and it looks very similar to some of the other velvet Anthuriums.  I am told this one is more of a satiny texture.

Anthurium leuconeurum

According to Deni Brown’s book “Aroids: plants of the Arum family”, this might not be a species, but a naturally occurring hybrid.  For the time being it is given species status.  Here are a couple of links with some information on this plant: World Field Guide, Araceum.

Anthurium magnificum

This is one of those plants that is a little more satiny than velvety, I am told.

Anthurium marmoratum

This Anthurium has large leaves whose leaves are strongly iridescent.

Anthurium pallidiflorum

This is a strap-leaf, pendent Anthurium, with satiny iridescent leaves.  I have a small seedling of this plant, but it’s nothing to look at yet.  Here’s an excellent picture, and another here.

Anthurium papillilaminum

This plant blows me away.  Check out those dark leaves with such an interesting shape.  Very cool.

Anthurium portilloi

This is one of those plants that might be better described as satiny, as opposed to velvety.  It certainly looks that way from the picture.

Anthurium regale

This is one of the more common velvet Anthuriums in cultivation (not that any of them are really common).  It looks very similar to A. crystallinum, A. clarinervium and A. magnificum.  The main difference in appearance, that I notice, is that the sinus of A. regale is considerably wider than any of the others.  One of Steve Lucas’s photos has been immortalized on the latest International Aroid Society promotional brochures.

Anthurium vittariifolium

This is another of the strap-leaf, pendent Anthuriums.  It has satiny leaves of a silver-blue-green color.  There are also some really nice pictures of strap-leaved Anthuriums at the Palm Talk forum here.

Anthurium warocqueanum

This beautiful Anthurium is known for it’s long and slender leaves with velvet texture.  It has been given the common name “Queen Anthurium”, while Anthurium veitchii is known as the “King Anthurium.”  While both of these plants have long, slender leaves, the King Anthurium has a slick, glossy texture to the dark leaves.

Anthurium ‘Ace of Spades’

This plant is presumed to be a hybrid, but the parentage is unknown.  The hybrid is believed to have originated in Hawaii and that’s about all we know.  The most prominent characteristic is the bronze/red leaves, which you can see in each of the following images.

Anthurium ‘Dark Mama’ (Anth. warocqueanum x. Anth. papillilaminum)

This hybrid is the offspring of a set of velvety Anthuriums, resulting in a really unique leaf shape and great, dark color.  Look at the iridescence showing up on that lower right leaf.  Beautiful.

Anthurium ‘Kybutzii’

This plant is of unknown origin.  It might be a species or it could be a naturally occurring hybrid.  It has large, satiny leaves and what appears to be raised primary veins on the adaxial (upper) leaf surface.

Anthurium ‘Nikki’

This is another Anthurium hybrid of unknown parentage.  It came from a notable grower in India.

Anthurium hybrid (Anth. magnificum x. Anth. crystallinum)

Of all the pictures in this post, I think this one is the most striking.  This is quite a unique hybrid.  The most recent plant sold for $52.50 on eBay!

This post continues, so please click on the “2″ below.

Just a month before the IAS show, where I expect to be purchasing some aroids, I was sent a box from my fellow Aglaonema addict and friend, Russ.  He sent me 8 wonderful plants: 5 Aglaonemas and 3 Dieffenbachias.

Several of these new Aglaonemas have the distinctive white petioles (leaf stems) and center ribs.  This includes Aglaonema ‘Brilliant’ (above) and Aglaonema ‘White Rain’ (below).

Christie’s favorite plant out of this batch is Aglaonema ‘Key Largo’, which has relatively wide leaves that are deep green, with a lot of silver in the middle of the leaves and some small patches of silver/green mixed in there.  I wonder if Christie has a subconscious favoritism here because of her excitement about our trip to the Florida Keys next month!

One of these plants comes from a seedling that Russ acquired from Aglaonema breeder and author Frank Brown.  The seedling is from ‘Queen of Siam’, but it has green petioles, whereas the registered hybrid ‘Queen of Siam’ has white petioles.

The first Dieffenbachia is actually a species, the only species Russ sent this time.  It is Dieffenbachia tarabitensis, which is native to Ecuador.  It is primarily a dark green, but there is a very small amount of variegation near the center rib.  The most distinctive feature is the mottled petioles.  Can you see how the stem leading to the leaves is not solid in color?

These last two are somewhat unknowns.  Russ thinks the one above is probably the hybrid Dieffenbachia ‘Paradise’ but he doesn’t know whether the other is even a species or hybrid.  Maybe I can get some help figuring out that one.  It’s actually my favorite plant in the batch since it is so unique.  The leaves are almost entirely silver, with a white midrib and a couple blotches of white and green on the leaves.  You can also see the parallel veins in green, arching away from the midrib.

It’s so great to have friends interested in growing these plants.  While an Aglaonema is not impossible to find, it is really hard to find one with the correct name attached and to find a location with much of a selection.  The species and older hybrids are found only in collections.  And with generous friends you can grow your collection without spending a lot of money.

Sometime in late December or early January I had an Aglaonema bloom.  I was planning on collecting some of the pollen and using it to pollinate future blooms on my other Aglaonemas, but I didn’t get any after all.  I have left the inflorescence alone and was surprised to see a couple weeks after the spadix was “finished” that berries were beginning to form on the lower half of the spadix.

Time ticks by and the berries begin to get larger and darker green.

At the same time, the 2nd inflorescence on the plant began to set fruit as well.  But these berries were a little behind the other set and eventually this infructescence shriveled up and fell off the plant.

The berries on the original infructescence stayed large and firm with very little change in color or size over the summer.  Then, all of the sudden, I noticed the berries were orange.  I reached down to feel of them and the first big berry had become soft and fell right off the spathe.  This is the sign I was looking for.  I plucked the berries off and here they are.

The berries vary greatly in size.  There are a total of 11, 3 of them of decent size and the others pretty tiny.  I’ll get these cleaned and planted this week, knowing they need to be fresh.

Now I have another Aglaonema setting berries, Aglaonema Decora.  Wish me luck with all of my aroid seedlings.  I’m going to need it with these extreme temperatures!

I guess you could say this whole schebang got started with Aglaonemas.  My mom had a plant with silver markings on the leaves when I was growing up that I liked.  It was Aglaonema ‘Silver King’ I believe.  Then about 4 years ago as I started to grow more houseplants on my own I came across two large Aglaonemas that got me started on the collecting bug.  My first real post to this blog was just to post pictures of those first Aglaonemas.  Shortly thereafter I got a comment from a guy named Russ, a stranger in Florida, who sent me a bunch of plants (for free!) just because he was a cool guy that also liked plants and wanted to encourage me to grow more aroids, which, at the time, I didn’t know much about.  All I had to do was reimburse Russ for his postage costs.  I quickly learned that plant people are very generous and pass along the generosity of those that encouraged them.

Here I am four years later – to the day – posting an update concerning my Aglaonema collection.  Since then, I have added quite a few Aglaonemas to my collection, while only losing a few along the way.  They are really pretty easy plants to grow, while also having some of the most attractive leaves I know.

Here’s a rundown of what I have, along with a short description of how each plant is doing, and a picture for most.

Aglaonema ‘Abidjan’: This is an attractive older cultivar.  You might wonder why it is named after an African city, when Aglaonemas are native to southeast Asia.  Well, I’m not sure how it got there, but A. ‘Abidjan’ was found by an American man growing at a nursery near Abidjan, Ivory Coast in 1974 and brought back to Florida.  It is thought that the plant traveled to Africa with a nurseryman from South America.  How it got to South America is yet another mystery.

Aglaonema alumina armandii: One of my favorites.  Silver-blue leaves.  Variegation is subtle, if at all.  Single stem growing very slowly, with about 4 leaves right now.  This plant has an interesting collection history, having been discovered by Armando Cruz (the plant’s namesake) near Manila in 1976.  It was found on a mountain just covered in this plant, which was given species status 9 years later.

Algaonema ‘BJ Freeman’: Very healthy large plant with large leaves.  This is the biggest plant I have.  I have hacked up a couple of the longer, lankier stems to start new plants.  My pot has probably 8-10 stems currently, ranging from small and young plants to plants that are 5-10 years old and about 3 feet tall.

Aglaonema ‘black lance’: Another one of my favorites.  My plant was ailing for a while, but I put it in my ICU pot (which I’ll describe another time) and now it is doing very well.

Aglaonema commutatum v. maculatum: This plant is doing pretty well.  There are 3 or 4 stems and it bloomed for me for the first time last fall.

Aglaonema ‘Decora’: This is a very attractive hybrid I picked up at a local nursery.  It is a vigorous grower that is currently in bloom.

Aglaonema ‘Gold Dust’: I got this plant from a fellow blogger a while back and I would have to say the original stem hasn’t grown much since then.  However, it has produced a couple of offsets, which is even better than having the original stem growing.  This cultivar is based on the species A. brevispathum.

Aglaonema ‘Green Lady’: This plant is my most vigorous offsetter.  That’s probably not a word, but it is producing offsets at a rapid pace.  The variegation is really nice on this plant when you stop and look at it.  See how many different shades of green you can count.  I think there are 4.

Aglaonema ‘Lilliput’: This is a really cool hybrid which has lanceolate (slender, lance-like), undulate (wavy) leaves.  The variegation is really nice, too.  I shared this plant with some friends, so it is about half the size it would be otherwise.

Aglaonema ‘Maria’ (not pictured): I have two separate pots of this plant.  It is the most common Ag to find for sale.  It grows reliably and is very easy to keep happy.  For some reason, I have some stems rot on occasion, but usually whatever piece of the stem has not gone mushy will produce it’s own plant.

Aglaonema ‘Peacock’: This is one of my two large Ags.  This one was so tall and lanky that I divided it into two pots shortly after buying it.  I also took the more lanky stems and cut them into pieces, which produced new plants.  Now I have one pot at home and the other resides permanently at the wedding chapel, with a couple of my other plants that are too large to go in my greenhouse.

Aglaonema ‘Royal Ripple’: It’s hard to tell in this picture that the leaves are rippled, but they truly are – just like ‘Lilliput.’  This is one of my more compact, profuse growers.  It’s a very pretty plant, with lanceolate leaves.

Aglaonema ‘Silver Bay’:  This plant is my second most steady grower, producing offsets quite often.  It probably has 4 or 5 stems right now.

Aglaonema NOID (possibly’Stripes’, ‘Cory’ or nitidum):  There are a number of cultivars and hybrids with stripes like this plant.  I haven’t nailed down which one mine is, but it definitely has parentage with A. nitidum, which is the striped species.

Aglaonema NOID:  I don’t really have any idea what this variety is.  Maybe ‘Maria Christina’?  Do you have any ideas which one this is?

My stories come from two hard-to-find books: The Amazing Aglaonema by B. Frank Brown and The Aglaonema Grower’s Notebook by Roy Jervis.