[Aroid-l] "Elephant Ear"??? Man, I hate that term!

From: mossytrail at hctc.com (mossytrail) on 2008.03.12 at 02:09:23(17161) > Steve I find that just about all plants labeled > commercially as Elephant ear are Colocasias esculenta. > The Xanthosomas are a bit harder to find and I have > rarely seen them commercially available. Yet many times I > have seen photos of Xanthosomas being used to sell > Colocasias as well as Alocasias. And the problem is not just in the nusery trade! I have seen photos of Alocasia and Xanthosoma being used interchangeably even in what are supposed to be identification guides. In fact, I had to make note of this fact in both my Aroideana articles. In one of my sources, a photo of Xanthosoma was used to illustrate a species account of Schismatoglottis! And when we consider popular books other than identification guides, the problem is not limited to Araceae, either. I've lost track of the number of times I've seen photos of seedling cabbage palm (Sabal palmetto), too young to have developed a trunk, incorrectly captioned as saw palmetto (Serenoa repens). +More With shenanigans like this going in on in paper publications, it is no wonder the identifications on eBay are such a mess. Jason Hernandez Naturalist-at-Large

Note: this is a very old post, so no reply function is available.