From: Scott Hyndman <scothynd at magicnet.net> on 1998.07.06 at 13:04:10(2428)
Geoffrey and All,
Alocasia 'Black Velvet' is a cultivar I named circa six years ago. I
got it from the Lyon Arboretum, Hawaii. I don't recall what they called
it, and I gave it what I thought to be a catchy commercial moniker. The
Lyon purportedly received it from a collector in
Japan. From there the origin becomes murky. The legend I pass on is
that a Japanese orchidologist discovered the species while botanising
for orchids in Borneo. The orchidologist either collected a single
individual or only succeeded with cultivating one individual as I have
only seen the clone A. 'Black Velvet' in collections and in tissue
culture production (http://www.agristarts.com). The orchidologist kept
the attractive plant's origin a secret for fear of over collection, wild
population descimation, habitat destruction, etc. There is an image of
a tetraploid clone of A. 'Black Velvet' that I selected from a tissue
culture population some years ago at
http://www.mobot.org/IAS/Hort/Tculture/abkvvt.html . You can probably
find another yourself as the tissue culturing seems to produce many of
these.
Maybe Dr. Hay can give us a species name for this stunning Alocasia. By
the way, it is one of many stunning Alocasia species that are described
very nicely in David Burnett's Aroideana edition Vol. 7, 3-4 "Cultivated
Alocasia", http://www.mobot.org/IAS/bk-issue.html .
Best Regards, Scott
Scott Hyndman
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