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  aglaonemas
From: Alektra at aol.com on 2001.10.23 at 04:41:15(7653)
Hello, I'm new to this list,
so I don't know the people and interests on it.
My fascination is with aglaonemas...
Is there anyone else out there who loves them?
I hope you will let me know who you are!
Best wishes,
Laura

From: plantnut plantnut at macconnect.com> on 2001.10.23 at 15:20:49(7657)
Laura,
Dr. Frank Brown has just written a new book on Aglaonema. I'm sure he
would be glad to sell you one if you wrote to him at 4263 Corey Rd.,
Valkaria, FL 32950 4306. About $25.00
Dewey

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From: StellrJ at aol.com on 2001.10.23 at 18:53:08(7658)
In a message dated Tue, 23 Oct 2001 12:43:00 AM Eastern Daylight Time, Alektra@aol.com writes:

> Hello, I'm new to this list,
> so I don't know the people and interests on it.
> My fascination is with aglaonemas...
> Is there anyone else out there who loves them?

Aglaonemas...very much an overlooked genus in this group, with so many of us Amorpho-freaks, Anthurium fanciers, and one very vocal Spathi-phile. I love those aroids you don't see in every shopping mall lobby or doctor's waiting room (obviously, that lets out P. bipinnatifidum). Aglaonema is a genus I would love to see in its natural habitat, blooming, with a crowd of pollinators around. I find I grow fewer and fewer houseplants as the years go by, because plants inside a house, detached from their ecological niches, are of less and less interest to me. One day I shall find the wild Aglaonema....

Jason Hernandez

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From: "Ron Iles" roniles at eircom.net> on 2001.10.23 at 18:55:52(7661)
Hello Laura,

As the News Editor of the IAS that although it is a very popular genus,
Aglaonema has not been discussed a lot in aroid-L, the "public" arena of the
I.A.S. A book "The Amazing Aglaonema" by one of our Members, Dr. Frank
Brown has just been published & he gave a presentation on the subject at the
annual Show in Miami this year. You can find out more about that & many
aroids on the Public part of the International Aroid Society Web site.
Aglaonemaabout our great Society. Please can we invite you to join us,
there are great advantages of being within the Society, most of all the
wonderful kindness & friendship of Members & the subsciption is very
moderate.
Articles on Aglaonema & so many other genera are expected in early issues of
the IAS Members only Newsletter too. If you join in 2001 now your
Subsciption carries over to December 2002 & there are exciting never before
offers to Members in the next News. SHHHH. And to everybody on Aroid-L who
is not a Member, there has never been a better time for you to join, please
don't miss the boat, I will say no more.....

Ron Iles.

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From: "Ron Iles" roniles at eircom.net> on 2001.10.24 at 04:30:08(7666)
Ms or Mr. Stella!

If you please! Spathigarruliphile!. Sorry you don't like supernatural Peace
Lilies in all the Shopping Malls you go to. And, isn't it good that they
clean the air in all your Doctors Surgeries? Please tell us how you prefer
Phalloids as House Plants? And - Sweetie pie, with all this
stuff splurtng in all directions how about just a teeny weeny
article for the next IAS News - about the nature bit?

Yours graciously

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From: Paul Tyerman ptyerman at ozemail.com.au> on 2001.10.24 at 15:03:41(7668)
>Laura - don't be put off by this naturist on the rampage. 99.9% of the
>Western & Eastern World love white perfumed Spathiphyllum & their near
>variegated leaved
>relatives, Aglaonemas. They are THE House plants of the future & you are in
>the forefront of those most discerning
>people who are now discovering them. I hope you will join the IAS.
>

Ron,

How are they as house plants? I had never even heard of them until Laura
raised them (Thanks Laura) and I have just been looking them up in a book
to find out what they are. Are they something that is available, or just
rarely in collections (and how do they go in Australia if anyone is growing
them here)? Nice leaves!!

Cheers.

Paul Tyerman

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From: StellrJ at aol.com on 2001.10.24 at 19:36:54(7671)
In a message dated Wed, 24 Oct 2001 12:30:29 AM Eastern Daylight Time, "Ron Iles" writes:

> stuff splurtng in all directions how about just a teeny weeny
> article for the next IAS News - about the nature bit?
>
Actually, I did submit a manuscript, not to the Newsletter, but to Aroideana. But never fear -- if I ever have something worthwhile to say in the newsletter, I will send it.

From: StellrJ at aol.com on 2001.10.24 at 19:37:56(7672)
In a message dated Wed, 24 Oct 2001 11:04:10 AM Eastern Daylight Time, Paul Tyerman writes:

> How are they as house plants? I had never even heard of them until Laura
> raised them (Thanks Laura) and I have just been looking them up in a book
> to find out what they are. Are they something that is available, or just
> rarely in collections?

Aglaonema is rather common, often going by the name "Chinese evergreen."

From: Betsy Feuerstein ecuador at midsouth.rr.com> on 2001.10.24 at 19:38:50(7673)
Hate to bust your bubble, they are the houseplants of the past and the present.
Future, most likely, more Aglaonemas. Certainly, those of us who have worked in
and done the interior scaping world have used these two genus as slowing
growing, light tolerant, reliables. Perhaps the tolerance to mealy bugs and
spider mites while a savior, is less than attractive in the scope of things.

Betsy

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From: "Ron Iles" roniles at eircom.net> on 2001.10.25 at 05:14:38(7676)
Paul Tyerman
Canberra, Australia wrote

"Who has TWO Spathiphyllums here in my office with me cleaning out my air"

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From: "Ron Iles" roniles at eircom.net> on 2001.10.25 at 05:14:59(7677)
Betsy

Thank you but my optimism is intact:

Are not Aglaonema & Spathiphyllum BOTH beautiful in different ways.& like
other groups of plants. Do not different plants appeal in different ways to
different people. Long may it be so. But it is interesting to consider how
these things may be.

I have not had the pleasure of reading Dr. Frank Browns authoritative manual
on Aglaonema so I do not know the number of species now known in that genus.
It seems that the common few species are all well known. I suggest that the
the popularity of these plants is due to their hybrids & selected cultivars
with more & more attractively variegated foliage.. I suggest that their
flowers are not as simply elegant & graceful as Peace Lilies.

Spathiphyllum were, & are exceptionally popular & I submit will surely
continue to appeal for the following reasons. Needing no variegation, they
are simply graceful in a "Zen" way, with their dark green leaves
contrasting with their classic white often subtly exquisitely perfumed
flowers. Their "past & present" has been maybe mostly based on hybrids
which apart from size often look very similar because their parents are of
a tragically restricted range of wild mostly rheophytic species. Most of
the so far known 43 wild species are extremely rare, inaccessible or unknown
in horticulture or most Botanic Gardens. The "missing ones" are often very
distinct, "different" & very beautiful. They have never been available for
cultivation, close study & hybridising as with maybe most Aglaonema species
& other plants for indoor use. The REAL future & biodiversity of Aroid
House Plants including Spathiphyllum can surely only truly manifest when far
more or all of the known & still to be discovered wild species are available
to simple specialists such as myself & others who struggle against the odds
& care & love enough to grow & study them for further dissemination & maybe
evangelisation.

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From: "Clarence Hammer" chammer at cfl.rr.com> on 2001.10.25 at 13:48:28(7680)
Paul--
Good ole Aglaonemas used to be THE houseplant way back when, and they went
out of vogue for
years. They're now making a strong commercial comeback in the form of
hybrids created by Dr. Frank Brown of Valkaria Fla. But even the 'old' ones
make wonderful houseplants, and in my opinion are well worth the space in an
Aroid collectors greenhouse. Interest has seriously waned for this and
other genera among Aroiders, in favor of the tuberous Amorpho's and company.
I've been looking for years for many of the old ones, such as 'Francher',
'Malay Beauty', 'Pewter', 'Belvedere', the many forms of costatum,
'Mutton-fat Jade', 'San Remo', the many forms of crispum, 'Nocturne', etc,
etc, etc.

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From: "Ron Iles" roniles at eircom.net> on 2001.10.27 at 19:26:46(7684)
Folks!

The "old" forms including you A. treubii are apparently still grown by my
old friends in Southern India inc. "A. treubii" still maybe as well as many
brilliant modern cultivars. If I can help?

Cheers

Ron

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From: George Yao gcyao at netasia.net> on 2001.10.27 at 21:03:30(7687)
Hi Paul and everyone,

Aglaonemas are the rave in Thailand nowadays, and although Philippine
hybridizers had introduced several nice hybrids, the place to find the most
sought after ones is Bangkok. A tidbit to whet your appetites, a couple of
months back, three newly grown hybrid seedlings as a package went for one
million baht (a little more than US$20,000) to a Malaysian enthusiast who
reportedly gifted them to the Sultan of Brunei. Of the three, the most
valuable was said to be the one with leaves as red as the red poinsettia.
The other two are a pinkish-leaved one and a yellow-leaved one.

George Yao

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From: George Yao gcyao at netasia.net> on 2001.10.27 at 21:06:32(7689)
Hi Russ,

Can you tell me more about the discovery of this 'giant hybrid swarm'? I've
never of this before and it sounds very interesting.

George Yao

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From: "Clarence Hammer" chammer at cfl.rr.com> on 2001.10.28 at 03:52:16(7695)
Hello George and all,

The 'hybrid swarm' I mentioned is documented in the 'Aglaonema Grower's
Notebook' by Roy Jervis, originally published 1978, my copy is 1980. It
concerns Aglaonema commutatum Schott. I will quote, but will have to do
some mild editing of references to pictures and drawings.

" Luzon's Aglaonema commutatum. Ever since Schott described Aglaonema
commutatum, this variable plant has been a popular house plant, not the
plant of the original description, but in many related variants.
Variegations making this plant so appealing are numerous and have induced
botanists to describe some of
them as new species. So we had A. elegans of Engler, A. marantifolium var.
maculatum of Hooker f., and
A. 'Treubii' as examples of the Aglaonema from Luzon. Nicholson simplified
the handling of the group by
delineating Schotts' plant as A. commutatum var. commutatum, making the
plant of Hooker into var. maculatum, and convincingly proving that A. cv.
'Treubii' could not possibly be the A. treubii that Engler described in 1898
and then emended (verbatim sp.) so that it cannot be identified."

"Another confusing element is the solid green plant with absolutely no
variegation that occasionally pops up as A. cuscuaria, which is a trade name
also used for the original spotted A. commutatum.''

''Often amid confusion, a chance happening can bring order out of chaos.
This apparently happened in March, 1980, when (Dr.) Frank Brown was guided
to a remote mountain side in Rizal province in the Philippines to see some
Aglaonema that had been found by chance a short time earlier. While the
results may not have eliminated the chaos, at least the chaos has an
explanation. .....Some of the variants that were part of this stand of
Aglaonemas came, not from a few plants, but each represents a pattern
consistent to an individual plant -- dozens of new 'species for the naming'!
One...duplicates the new cultivar 'Alumina'."

"Many of these Rizal leaf-forms have appeared in cultivars, but this is the
first instance I know of where they have been collected together in the
wild. The isolated locale of this stand of Aglaonemas tends to rule out
'escape from cultivation' as an explanation for their occurrence. At least
several hundred plants have been
removed from this locale since Dr. Brown and his companions first visited
the spot. Local nurserymen heard
about the find and, until the rainy season stopped their visits, they
collected large numbers for shipment to
Bankok and Singapore. The plants appear to be a giant 'hybrid swarm', not
just a few plants from a chance
cross, but from a more complex parentage and background."

"The species seems to be in the flux of development, probably from natural
hybridization involving A. crispum
(Pitcher & Manda) Nicholson, A. philippinense Engler, and A. simplex Blume.
...The more complicated

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From: Alektra at aol.com on 2001.10.29 at 03:08:03(7706)
Dear Paul and folks,

Thank you for your immediate welcome to the list! I'm sorry I am responding
so late, when all the threads seem to have wandered away. But I am very
interested in Ags, so I am going to trundle on with this.

I believe that Ags are perfect houseplants for me, and certainly worth your
time if you can get some. I find them extremely easy to grow, more satisfying
than anything else I've ever encountered. Maybe you can introduce them to
Australia if they aren't there already!

As for pests: I've never had spider mite or mealy bug problems on Ags
although other people do. I can't keep a pot of ivy or mums alive because
voracious spider mites commandeer them and kill them the moment I get home...
and I've had mealy problems with jades and African violets in the past... yet
I never have had pests on my Ags.

Here in the northeast U.S.A., Ags seem to be mostly used in plantings in
public locations such as malls and photocopy shops; the sunlight here is weak
enough that they often are put in unprotected windows, and they thrive.

Here it actually is difficult to find them sold as pot plants for the home.
In fact, one of my biggest complaints in relation to Ags is that I have not
been able to find a mail-order retailer who sells Ags by the variety. Ag
growers seem to be focused on wholesale "to the trade," meaning interior
landscapers. If anyone knows of a mail-order retailer of varietal Ags, let me
know!

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From: Paul Tyerman ptyerman at ozemail.com.au> on 2001.10.29 at 05:10:26(7711)
>even like the 200 kinds of sansevierias.

There are 200 Sanseverias? I didn't even realise there was more than one!!!!!

I went out to a local nursery and found Aglaonemas for sale there (a
variety called Silver something or other that I can't remember) and will be
buying one when I have the spare cash (at this rate.... 2006).

Cheers.

Paul Tyerman

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