Jardinerong Sunog (the Burnt Gardener)

During the closing days of 2019 and all the years before it that I can remember, there was no shortage of wishes for a better new year. I won't be telling you about my hopes for the coming year because, to be honest, I have none. Human will and wants are inconsequential in this great cog of events that happen simply because they happen. Was 2020 really THAT bad? Or is it only a trick of false perspective because most of us weren't yet alive when those great wars laid down immeasurable misery and that there is no way of knowing if the coming years would be worse? Whether we admit it or not, it only gets more and more dreadful each passing year. Calamities are increasing in frequency and destructive power and the degradation of human behavior translates to new lows which we never thought we'd witness a mere few years before. And, everybody dies. Whether he's an athlete for the ages or your next door bum, everybody is heading towards that inevitable finality. It's all ...

So what is the difference between Alocasia and Colocasia (apart from the spelling 😁)? This is one of the questions I wondered during my early years of collecting plants, and I must admit that I have interchanged both during some random discussions with other plantspeople. And while the matter has been resolved for me a long time ago, I totally understand the confusion it still brings to today's hobbyists. Unfortunately, the similarities are much more easily observed than their differences, which require scrutiny by a discerning eye, one which botanists commonly possess but not by most other mortals. Cheer up, lemme show you the way. Above: Alocasia or Colocasia ? Really, you only have to take the time to look under the leaf surfaces of your plants. Alocasia have glands situated at the axils of the midrib and the primary (main) lateral veins. These are absent in Colocasia . The fruits of both also differ. In Alocasia , the berries are large and ripen to deep orange, whereas the...