should be fine if you mulch over it.

Sounds good, thanks for the response! I'm excited, the first leaf is fairly large, about 7-8" and very pretty. I hope this multiplies like the plain ones.

This elephant ear is coming up and it does have spotted leaves. Love it!!! Probably a little too close to the plain one... will see how many leaves come out...

Congrats! Did it come with a name? Hard to tell, but it might be alocasia 'Hilo'. Your Persian Shield also looks great.

Well this discussion has some kind of gremlin. I've responded twice and it keeps disappearing. Don't know why the last photo quit working.

{{gwi:86143}}

Thanks for the compliment on the PS - my fav purple plant! Hilo sounds familiar but I couldn't say if that's because I read it on the tag or have read it on WWW sometime before. Loving these spots on this elephant ear!

It looks like you have one named 'Hilo Beauty'. I live in zone 8b in NW Florida and it isn't hardy here. You may need to dig and store it over the winter.

Thanks for the tip!

purpleinopp, if you deleted the photo elsewhere, it will delete it here as well. Just a thought.

I thought of that, but pretty sure I didn't. Any kind of brain fart is possible, though. Thanks!

Three pretty leaves now:

A 4th leaf now.

That looks like a Caladium to me, C. bicolor.

Thanks, tropic! This bulb was (is) as big as a softball and the leaves are BIG. Google didn't have any images of C. bicolor that looked the same to me. Couldn't find any showing the stems clearly to compare that, they're very dark colored on this plant.

Alocasia "Hilo beauty" is the most likely suggestion I think.

That's the top of a 5-gallon bucket under this leaf.

In the correct sense there is no Alocasia "Hilo beauty". That plant is also a sometimes misnamed Caladium, C. praetermissum. But it does look like some of my C. bicolor. The number of named varieties of Caladium bicolor is over 1000.

In the correct sense there is no Alocasia "Hilo beauty". Thanks for the input, but what does this mean?

Some nurseries still sell it under the name Alocasia "Hilo beauty". But it's a Caladium and not an Alocasia. So you can buy an Alocasia "Hilo beauty", but correctly what you have is a Caladium. Many nurseries aren't particularly concerned with names, they just want to sell the plant. As in many parts of the world, we still have Zamia vasquezii sold as Zamia fischeri. Also Philodendron bipinnatifidum sold as P. selloum. Even though the errors are commonly known, many wholesalers/nurseries won't correct the labels.

Thanks! Hmm... Do you mean it has been renamed? This plant is 4x as big (height, leaf size) as any Caladium I've seen. If it doesn't like as much moisture as Colocasia, maybe I should move it. It seems happy though.

Just incorrectly named. If you google it, you'll find, scattered in amongst the sites still using the incorrect name, others giving the explanation about the correct ID. There's some interesting reading from people who get quite pedantic about correct names.

So this plant has been renamed?

Hi Purple,

Did it come back for you yet?

Carol in Jacksonville

Hi Carol. No sign of it yet, but had 3 frosts this week. No sign of any Caladiums yet...
- Tiffany

Thought this thread looked familiar. I must have missed your last question Purple. This plant wasn't "renamed" as it hadn't been scientifically named. As I recall, the bloke who found the plant was working for a nursery (a plant "hunter") and found it in South America. He apparently wasn't too cluey, not knowing Alocasia (or Colocasia) don't come from South America. So he sent it back to the nursery as an Alocasia. They propagated it and for marketing purposes added a Hawaiian tag to it. When the taxonomists got to it they described and named it as a Caladium. Some nurseries realised it didn't look like an Alocasia but still erroneously tagged it as a Colocasia.

We have an Epipremnum (native) here which had been Raphidophora. When I suggested to a taxonomist it had been renamed he was quite definite is was the correction of an error by the original taxonomist, the plant should never have been described as a Raphidophora. Apparently that's only when key characteristics of a genus become more refined or changed so that some plants then fall outside the new parameters and they're renamed. They (taxonomists) can be quite pedantic.

Hey, thanks for the explanation! That's fairly different than a "regular renaming." I might be struck by the mood to say more about that later, not feelin' it right now, and not enough time.

Just hope it comes back up...! The other Caladiums have so far, since I put them in a few years ago. Hard to say about this big one yet, with all of the Oxalis in that area, and no sign of any Caladiums yet. Knowing it's not a Colocasia is soothing, which definitely should/would be visible by now.

That's the thing with Alocasias and Colocasias, they just seem to come up and get on with the business of growing. Caladiums can be such tempermental prima donnas.

Caladiums are not hardy in my 8b, NW Florida yard - I have to take them into the greenhouse when the weather turns cold - around 40 degrees.