Re: [aroid-l] Thai Caladium Project

From: "Julius Boos" ju-bo at msn.com> on 2004.01.11 at 14:59:21(11002) Dear Tim, Lovely photos. My suggestions would be that the book contain information on the background/parentage on these exquisite plants, not just a "pretty pretty" book of photos. I see that most seem to have been derived from a variety I saw grown in quantity at Lake Placid, Cen. Florida YEARS ago, it was I believe called 'Pink Fantasy' of some such, what seems to be the same plant turned up and is still for sale in Florida as 'Thai Beauty". Some of these Thai vars. illustrated on your page seem to have little if any green areas on their leaves, I have been told that this makes for little or no tuber formation, and the demise of the beautiful plant after one year of growth when the cool season hits in the USA, so some GOOD cultural notes on how they keep their stock going from year to year would be of great help. ( I suspect that they are kept from going dormant at all in their all-year-round warm growing conditions.) For those who REALLY like Caladiums please visit Paul Resslar`s Caladium page which is linked to the MOBOT IAS pages. Many wild species are pictured, some as beautiful as the hybrids, and I would LOVE to see a book done on them with color photos. Julius Boos +More WPB, FLORIDA >>I know a few people on the list are interested in the Thai Caladiums. I've been trying for a long time to get a collection going and get some information on them. It hasn't been an easy process, and I had pretty much given up. Amazingly enough though I've been asked to help out a thai friend who is going to author both a thai and english book on the thai caladiums. I don't know when the book will become available, it is still being written, and the photographs being taken etc. I've been given several photos already and will be getting many more to put up an on-line gallery and to post some info on the caladiums since there is so little info out there. I've been importing a few varities for the last couple of years, but was pretty limited in what was available. There seems to be an effort there to make the more desirable varities commercially available, which will be nice. I'm redoing all of my ginger stuff into a new format for the web which will work well for this caladium project too. Until that is ready, I've put up a VERY quick page with 10 varieties. Only a few are named, the rest are new hybrids. I'll make another post when something more substantial is up. I was both surprised and happy to hear about this project as there is nothing in english on the thai caladiums, and the two Amarin Press books are already out of print (and won't be re-printed). The history of these caladium is pretty interesting, and should make for a great read. I've been asked to ask what people would like to see in the english version, so if anybody has any suggestions please forward them to me. I'd like to help make this as good as possible for the people that would buy it, so any input would make the job easier. The very no-frills page is at : http://www.gingerwoodnursery.com/caladiums/caladiums.html enjoy, Tim Chapman -- Timothy Chapman - tim@gingerwoodnursery.com Gingerwood Nursery- http://www.gingerwoodnursery.com On-line Ginger Forums - http://www.gingerwoodnursery.com/forums/ Gingerwood Nursery Mailing List - http://www.gingerwoodnursery.com/mailman/listinfo/gingerwoodnursery_gingerwoodnursery.com

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