International Aroid Society

Dear Marek,

As I said in the email to you on the 3^rd, yes, this is a Homalomena. It is a member of the Chamaecladon Supergroup, distinguished by small spathes that lack a constriction, but we are unable to identify it further to species. The plant when you bought it was already mainly in fruit (inflorescences pendent). The spathe that opened is actually abscising from the base to reveal fruits. I notice from your images that there are still inflorescences emerging from the middle of the plant, these have yet to flower, and you should keep an eye these. Homalomena inflorescences open only for a short while, usually late in the evening. Initially the spathe gapes slightly (this is the pistillate phase). Later the spathe will open more widely (this is the staminate) phase and then close, at which stage it looks as if it is ready to open. A while later the peduncle will begin to bend to bring the inflorescences to the position that most are in your images.

The good news is that these plants have certainly not been wild collected. They are far too clean. My guess is that the originating nursery has large mother plants and from these removed small offsets and pots separately, leaves them for a couple of weeks to initiate roots, and then ships.

Very best

Peter

From: aroid-l-bounces@www.gizmoworks.com [mailto:aroid-l-bounces@www.gizmoworks.com] On Behalf Of Marek Argent
Sent: Friday, 3 September, 2010 10:37 AM
To: discussion of aroids
Subject: [Aroid-l] Fw: Homalomena or ...?

Dear Friends,

I bought an aroid in a pet shop as an aquarium plant.

I think it is a species of Homalomena or something from Schismatoglottideae from SE Asia.

The leaves are stiff, dry in touch, like the leaves of Aglaonema.

The petioles are reddish at the base (but not always).

The leaf blades are 12-17 cm long on 11-14 cm long petioles.

It produces 2 inflorescences from a node. They are 3 cm tall on 4 cm long peduncles.

When I bought it, 3 days ago, all the spathes were tightly wrapping the inflorescence.

Today one of them opened, I didn't notice when, but it didn't unroll like most aroids.

I found it detached from the peduncle, a few cm away.

The inflorescence was rotten at the base, so it fell off as I touched it.

The female flowers are about 1mm tall x 0.6 mm wide. There are no pistillodes or staminodes.

I opened also the second inflorescence,

but now I have no possibility to transfer the new photos.

The spathe is very thick, the female flowers are green

and there is an incredible amount of wet pollen on the male flowers.

I may send the photos tomorrow.

It seems the plant was brutally cut off by a "collector",

because there are no roots at all.

I hope it will recover in my small greenhouse.

The plant looks almost identically as the one that was identified as Homalomena insignis.

http://www.wschowa.com/abrimaal/araceum/homalomena/insignis.htm

I managed to rescue it, but it is still very small. This one is more robust.

(I attach 3 photos, these with dates as filenames are Hom. insignis,

these beginning from 100 are photos of the new plant)

Very Best,

Marek