Alloschemone

From: Brian Williams pugturd at alltel.net> on 2003.12.10 at 16:27:50(10893) I have been looking for a particular plant that haunts me to this day. Years ago I was in florida visiting collectors with my father. We visited a Cycad guy that had a small collection of aroids. My father was after some cycads and I talked the guy out of a few cuttings of philos he had growing on a tree. He had collected them himself he said, but was not sure where they came from. I was very new to aroids at the time so was after about anything and was not exactly able to ID much with out the help of my books. There he had a huge tree with about 5 species of philos and other aroids on it. He told me 10.00 each for nice cuttings. I had 40.00 bucks I got a imbe variegata and a few commons. Then lower at the base I noticed something very very strange a small veining plant with very cut leaves. Looked a lot like Amydrium zippelianum but shorter leaves and much thinner segments in the leaves. The vine was so tine it was in the cracks of the tree bark. I cannot think of anything to really describe how odd and small the stems were. This thing was extremely delicate looking. I would have written it off now as amydrium had I not noticed something extremely odd about it. Along the stems were small thorns these were fairly far apart about 1 to 3 inches. The plant at this point was about 5ft up the tree but growing with a leaf only every 1 to 2 ft. So when it was offered I told him I would let it grow out a bit and get it next year when I would visit. The next year came around I dreamed about the damn plant tried looking for it in every book and asked a few experts what they thought it could be. I could not find any info some said maybe not a aroid. So the following year I visit. Only to get that plant and it had taken a bad winter and died. I questioned the guy were it was from, Out of all the questions I think it was south american plant. The only thing close to all the research is Alloschemone but does anyone know if they have small thorns along the stems? If not can anyone figure out what in the world is keeping me from my sleep LOL. I talked to the guy and he said he had given a few cuttings to another friend though everything seems to lead to a dead end. I don't know if it's the plant that I really want so bad or the fact that I cannot get it and no one seems to know anything about it. Either way was one of those times I regret terrible. I hope to never have it happen again LOL. THANKS

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