International Aroid Society

Hi Simon,

Of course my remarks about altitude referred only to the tropics. Your altitude in the Netherlands is not applicable, since you are growing in controlled temperature greenhouses.

What matters is temperature. Whilst you referred to 75 to 90% humidity you did not give temperatures.

In the tropics, temperatures lessen with altitude. (As elsewhere.) Here in Grenada at low altitudes we experience temperatures between 75 degrees and 30 degrees. This is too high for A. scherzerianum.

Please let me know the temperatures in your greenhouses.

John.

From: aroid-l-bounces@www.gizmoworks.com [mailto:aroid-l-bounces@www.gizmoworks.com] On Behalf Of S.M. Wellinga
Sent: Monday, September 29, 2014 1:12 PM
To: aroid-l@www.gizmoworks.com
Subject: Re: [Aroid-l] Aroid-L Digest, Vol 118, Issue 11 / Re: Introduction / true to species material of Anthurium scherzerianum (Tom Croat)

Hi Greg, John and Tom,

Thank you for each of your replies. With respect to Greg's suggestion to contact Anthura about the availability of true-to-species material of Anthurium scherzerianum, I will give it a try, although I am not sure how forthcoming a commercial enterprise will be when it comes to sharing material from their botanical gene pool with a private grower like me.

Both John and Tom suggested that cultivating a species like A. scherzerianum at sea level might be a problem. However, although The Netherlands is indeed much less elevated than the natural habitats this species hauls from in Costa Rica (to make matters worse, I am not even living at sea level, but actually a couple of meters below ;-)), it doesn't exactly have a tropical climate. Ours is a 'moderate maritime climate', and while we receive a bit less rain and see the sun more often, and our monthly average relative humidity is a bit higher (75-90%) and temperature extremes are a bit more pronounced (both with respect to highs and lows), conditions in The Netherlands are more or less comparable to those in the British Isles. Most of the plants I grow stem from altitudes between 1,400-2,400 m asl and some from even higher elevations, and a species like, for instance, Anthurium cabrerense - which growers in the southern states of the US have difficulty with- does well under my growing conditions. I am therefore pretty convinced that I'd also be able to keep A. scherzerianum in good health, especially so since when I was a small boy, this species used to be a fairly common houseplant - such, before it was discarded by large commercial nurseries in favour of higher yield crops like today's Anthurium hybrids.

As to your suggestion, Tom, to send you pictures of the unidentified Anthurium species that I bought from Ecuagenera as Anthurium flavolineatum, I currently don't have any. It isn't a problem to produce a series next weekend, but the thing is my plant is currently not in anthesis. How useful would pictures of the plants' habit, leaves, stem etc. be to you, without being able to see what its spathe and spadix look like? I could of course send you a description of both, but since I have to do this from memory, it might be lacking in the kind of detail you probably need.

With best regards,

Simon M. Wellinga

Heerenveen, The Netherlands / EU

Op 28 sep. 2014, om 19:00 heeft aroid-l-request@www.gizmoworks.com het volgende geschreven:

Today's Topics:

  1. Re: Introduction / true to species material of Anthurium
     scherzerianum (Tom Croat)

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Message: 1
Date: Sun, 28 Sep 2014 03:47:05 +0000
From: Tom Croat <Thomas.Croat@mobot.org>
Subject: Re: [Aroid-l] Introduction / true to species material of
          Anthurium scherzerianum
To: 'Discussion of aroids' <aroid-l@www.gizmoworks.com>
Message-ID:
          <442112D3D8737B41868F544B2D822F87601E01D3@MBGMail02.mobot.org>
Content-Type: text/plain; charset=3D"us-ascii"

Simon: Send me images of you plant that you bought from Ecuagenera and I will see if I can determine it. Most of the material from Ecuagenera, though of wild origen is often not really determined to species.

Tom Croat