Jardinerong Sunog (the Burnt Gardener)

Like an old buddy who I'd like to visit every now and then, these wild Pothos dolichophyllus have become a much-favored plant too see every time I take one of those many silent hikes. Yep, an old buddy that requires you to clamber up cliffs 😅 Most of you might be familiar with the so-called ' Pothos ' in cultivation, but those really are variations and cultivars of the commonly cultivated Epipremnum aureum . True Pothos are unrelated and very seldom seen in cultivation: most, if not all, species are true jungle plants that require forest conditions and can be notoriously difficult to root from cuttings.   Now, some of you might remark the Anthurium -ish foliage, particularly the veining. It's because both Anthurium and Pothos are relatives: they belong to the aroid subfamily Pothoideae . While Anthurium is Neotropical and contains the largest assemblage of species of any aroid genus, both Pothos and Pothoidium are Old World representatives of the subfamily. Pothos d...

  In the Philippines, three commonly encountered Alocasia species are frequently mixed with one another that identification of plants posted in social media has resulted in a muddied concept of what constitutes what, with most plants getting labeled as ' Alocasia heterophylla ' even though practically no one can elucidate why he thinks it is that species. More on that later. Still, admit I should that I, too, was confused not too long ago until I got fed up with my own ignorance and decided to undo it once and for all. I now show thee the path to thy enlightenment. The main aim of this article is to allow you to reliably identify which is which. I am going to keep this ultra-simplified, so I am not going to talk about floral morphologies. People usually don't catch them in flower anyway and very few have the inclination to save dissected inflorescence samples in an alcohol solution for later reference. The other aim, well, we'll get to that later. Alocasia heterophylla...