| I am sorry if this post upsets some on this forum The differences in Alocasia zebrina, Alocasia Reticulata and Alocasia Tigrina are only natural variation. Lots of people tend to believe if the leaves of plants don't look exactly alike they must be a different species but scientifically that is not correct. If the DNA of the three was checked you'd find only a single species which would be Alocasia zebrina. Here's another way to look at it. I'm sure you know individuals that have dark hair, dark skin and dark eyes. You also know people that have light skin, light hair and blue or green eyes. One may be very heavy and the other very thin so they don't look exactly alike. Their faces are also not likely to be similar and one may be very tall and the other very short but none of us would ever presume the two individuals were a different species. They are just variations of the same species. For some reason people have trouble applying the concept of variation in humans to the natural variation of plants. If we see any slight variation we immediately assume the plants must be different species. NASA has stated that one out of every 8 plant species exhibits natural variation. In the 1800's botanists often granted new names to many plants simply because they didn't look alike but once the science advanced it was learned they had given different names to the same exact species. That is now known as the second plant (or third, fourth, fifth, sixth, etc.) being a synonym of the correctly accepted name. Aroids are extremely variable and I can show you plants in my atrium with 5 to 8 totally different looking leaves on a single plant. Some are long and thin while others are very wide. Some demonstrate leaf margins that are ragged while others exhibit leaves with little to no edge differences. Some have tall lobes while others have short lobes but they are all growing on the same plant. That is typical of aroids. To identify a species a botanist looks for the shape of the cataphyll which protects any newly opening blade, the vein structure (venation) of the leaf blade, the shape of the petiole (which everyone wants to call the "stem", and the node spacing on the true stem which is the central axis of the plant (bottom or base) as well as the general shape and sexual characteristics of the inflorescence to determine the species. They don't consider the leaf blade first and if you were to read a scientific description you'd quickly realize the botanist began at the bottom of the plant and worked upwards. The leaf is one of the least important details in determining the species of the plant since it is often extremely variable. In Alocasia zebrina, Alocasia Reticulata, and Alocasia Tigrina those factors are nearly identical yet the leaf blades are very different. Of the three only Alocasia zebrina is a species. The others are simply horticultural names given by plant growers and sellers to plants that "appear" to be unique. By the way, as the plant fully becomes an adult the pattern on Alocasia zebrina Reticulata form almost totally vanishes. Go to any scientific source such as TROPICOS or the International Plant Names Index and you won't find the names Alocasia Tigrina nor Alocasia Reticulata listed. They aren't species but simply horticultural or common names. | 
