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khoffman19_gw

Frydek Alocasia

24 years ago

Help!

I am in desperate need of advice on how to take care of my alocasia. I purchased it untagged at the same time that I purchased a Black Magic Colocasia. I had been treating them the same.

The Black magic is doing great, however the Frydek is not so happy.

Please advise how alocasias differ from colocasia.

Here is a link that might be useful:

Comments (3)

  • 23 years ago

    Colocasias can usually be grown as bog plants, and alocasias cannot.

  • 22 years ago

    Alocasia Frydek (also the A. amazonica) is pretty tender. I think I read it goes dormant under 45. I just brought mine inside today since we're supposed to go down into the 40's starting tomorrow night. Do a google on it and it'll pop up a good bit of info. Happy Gardening!

  • 21 years ago

    I had my 'Frydek' in a very large pot (24 inch) with a Zebrina banana tree and a Canary Island trumpet vine. I pulled all the 'Frydek' plants out and put into a 10 inch clay pot last fall and stuck the pot in the garage, cut back on watering and this year they are doing great.

    What I really wanted to say is they must be hardier than I thought. Due to the very large pot and hearing that banana trees were somewhat hardy - I put the pot with the banana and trumpet vine in my barn and tried to keep it above freezing with a mal-functioning kerosene heater. Needless to say the heater fizzled out several sub-freezing nights after I thought it was properly lit. I lost the banana, but the trumpet vine is blooming like crazy, and surprise, surprise I had two small 'Frydek' plants come up from missed bulbils.

    I also have dug many 'Illustris' from the ground this year from broken off tubers, some 'Black Magic', and a couple of violet stem ones missed from last year's digging. They grow so rapidly from such small rhizomes that it is hard to believe they survived the winter and were so small to begin with.

    My biggest complaint is I bought a alocasia that was labled 'Portadora' 2 years ago for $10. I put it in my greenhouse but it gave up the ghost. It was in the same pot as a begonia 'Richmondensis' that is now a fine looking specimen.

    So last year I bought the same plant for $18 at the same place - but I pulled up the 2 large tubers last fall and stored dry. They came out fine so I planted directly in the ground along with the above colocasias I mentioned. All came up except the 'Portadora' and it was the one most cared for and had the largest tubers.

    Luckily the extra large pot I planted it in along with other aroids such as C. 'Hilo Beauty', A. 'Bako Park', anthurium 'Crystallinum', and a Hawaiian snow bush (breynia) - when I lifted the 2 large tubers last fall it must've broken off some smaller ones. I moved this pot in my garage last fall and since I moved it out all my aroids have come out (although the anthurium did not go dormant like the alocasias and colocasias). What I don't understand is the largest 'Portadora' plant is back around with the breynia, while all the others are in the front of the pot where the mother plants were. I'll accept it as a good luck sign and not question it.

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