I Speak For The Trees

It’s Friday, and that means it’s time for a new special feature - Aroid of the Week - here on I Speak For The Trees.  Aroids are members of the very large family Araceae and are among the most variable known plants within their own species.  They occur pantropically, with the highest concentrations of different species found in montane and premontane cloud forests.  If you grow a Peace Lily, Dieffenbachia, or Callas (properly called Zantedeschia) you are growing an Aroid.  Other genus within the family include Monstera, Philodendron, Anthurium, Alocasia, Colocasia, and Xanthosoma.  They range in size from very small to gigantic, and encompas a large number of leaf shapes.  The common linking factor is the inflorescence, called a spathe, which is produced by all members of the family.

Ecuador is one of the biodiversity hot-spots for plants of this family, and since I spend a lot of time in the cloud forests where they grow I have decided to feature them once weekly here on the blog.

The photos show what I previously beleived to be Anthurium angamarcanum, growing in the Quito Botanical Gardens Temperate Orchidarium, Quito, Pichincha Province. This speciment may be an odd variant of A. angamarcanum, or it may be one of several other species.  It is an exceptionally large-bladed member of the Araceae; the leaves of this specimen are around 2 meters in length.  The plant grows terrestrially and hemiepiphytically (it appears to not be a true epiphyte but shares some of the characteristics and can also grow in soil,) and is found in the wild climbing up trees.  This plant is an Ecuadorian native.

The second photo features the plant’s inflorescence, which in this specimen is beginning to mature into the ripe red berries that contain the plant’s seeds.  I have received comments that this may not be a fully typical inflorescence, as the Spadix, which initially covers the inflorescence, appears to be somehow deformed.  This is apparently not uncommon among Aroids.

An excellent article on the species I previously beleived that this specimen was an example of, A. angamarcanum and A. maromoratum, can be found here.  Thank you to Steve Marak, writer of the article and the person who initially confirmed my suspicion as to the identity of this aroid.  Thank you also to Windy Aubrey of Gypsy Tropicals, who disagreed and pointed me in a new direction for further research.  I shall continue to update this post as more information reaches me about this specimen; I also plan to ask the curators of the Quito Botanical Gardens, where the aroid is housed in the temperate orchidarium, what they think it is.