Wild, Wonderful Aroids Part Two - Elephant Ears, Alocasia, Colocasia and Xanthosoma - Page 5
© Marge Talt
Those that make tubers/corms can be stored dry or kept in a pot on the dry side in a place that is about 50ºF (10ºC).
Those that do not form tubers/corms need to be potted and can be kept growing in the house if you can give them enough light and increase the humidity from normal heated room humidity.
If you live well north of USDA zone 7b, it would be easier to simply grow these plants in pots, hauling them out for summer and in for winter, than planting them in the ground and having to dig them up. I've also read that the soil in northern climates does not warm enough for optimum growth, but that soil in a pot where summers get hot, will be warm enough.
Current thinking is that the key to overwintering them in the ground in the cooler part of zone 7 (and possibly farther north) is to keep them dry. It's not so much cold that kills some of these tropicals as wet cold. I intend to give this a try this year. To hedge my bets, I will dig up some pieces of my plants and then, once frost kills the foliage, remove it and cover the crowns with manure, mulch, plastic and more mulch. When spring comes and the temperatures start to warm up, I will remove the top mulch and plastic and let them (hopefully) grow up through the bottom layer of manure and mulch, which ought to help feed them, too. We shall see whether or not this succeeds!
Alocasia
I keep finding reference to there being seventy species of Alocasia, but only seventeen species are listed in W3TROPICOS and I have yet to find a listing showing more than that.
Alocasia and Colocasia were once considered the same genus (Colocasia) and there still seems to be massive cross-over in references that mention them by common name, since both are called Taro and many species of both are edible. The differences between them, according to the gurus on Aroid-L, are:
- The most important difference between the two is microscopic, found within the female flowers. In Colocasia the placenta is along the interior sides of the embryonic future berry from top to bottom with the many "stems" of the ovaries attached to the placenta along the interior sides of the ovary. In Alocasia the placenta is basal, and a sparser number of ovaries and "stems" are attached to it within the embryonic future berry but along its interior base.
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