ALOCASIA LONGILOBA ‘KORTHALSII’
CULTIVAR DESCRIPTION:
Alocasia longiloba 'Korthalsii' is the quiet one among the species' shield-leaved forms. The blade is peltate and shield-shaped, to about sixteen inches long, and — unlike its silver-veined siblings — usually plain mid-green on both surfaces, sometimes deep purple beneath, without contrasting pale venation.³ The rhizome and the inflorescence are the smallest in this group, and the spathe limb is markedly hooded.³ In the wild it is a plant of the Bornean rainforest floor at low elevations, terrestrial where 'Watsoniana' tends to rock.³
'Korthalsii' is a named form of Alocasia longiloba, and where the forms meet they blur: it intergrades with 'Lowii' in Sarawak, yet at Sepilok in Sabah it grows side by side with typical 'Longiloba' without blending into it.³ The epithet is a legacy Latin-form name, retained as a cultivar epithet as the cultivar code allows for names of its era.
HISTORY:
The name was born botanical, not horticultural. Heinrich Schott described Alocasia korthalsii in 1863 in the Annales of the Leiden botanical museum, from a plant collected on Mount Sakoembang in southern Borneo by Pieter Willem Korthals — the Dutch Indies naturalist the plant honors, its own collector.² On the very next page of the same work, Schott described Alocasia veitchi; the two names that would one day be folded into the same species entered the books together.²
Then, for the better part of a century, near silence: no show tables, no trade debuts, only the systematic lists. The plant's documented return travels through a botanical garden — in June 1960 the United States Department of Agriculture received Alocasia korthalsii from the Palmengarten in Frankfurt, logging it as Plant Introduction 265914, one number ahead of Alocasia micholitziana from the same shipment.⁴
By 1984 David Burnett could report it back among "the plants that enrich collections" after being absent from cultivation "for many years."⁵ Its name also threads the old hybrid records: the Victorian cross Alocasia 'Luciani' was recorded as this plant crossed with 'Putzeysii', and Burnett read it as a parent of Alocasia 'Pucciana' as well.⁵
CONFUSED WITH: The label is historically unreliable. Burnett warned that many plants circulating in Australia as A. korthalsii or A. thibautiana are in fact forms of the plant sold as Alocasia lowii, and he suspected the old hybrid Alocasia 'Chelsonii' — which strongly resembles this cultivar — of being no hybrid at all.⁵ True 'Korthalsii' is told by its plain venation, small hooded inflorescence, and terrestrial habit.³
HYBRIDS:
Alocasia ‘Kerchoveana’ (Alocasia longiloba ‘Putzeysii’ x Alocasia longiloba ‘Korthalsii’)
Alocasia ‘Luciani’ (Alocasia longiloba ‘Korthalsii’ x Alocasia longiloba ‘Putzeysii’)
Alocasia ‘Martin Cahuzac’ (Alocasia longiloba ‘Korthalsii’ x Alocasia ‘Pucciana’)
Alocasia ‘Pucciana’ (Alocasia longiloba ‘Putzeysii’ x Alocasia longiloba ‘Korthalsii’)
Alocasia ‘Rodigasiana’ (Alocasia reginae x Alocasia longiloba ‘Korthalsii’)
REFERENCES:
1. Plants of the World Online, Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew — Plants of the World Online, Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew — Alocasia longiloba Miq.
2. Schott, H.W. 1863. Alocasia korthalsii. Annales Musei Botanici Lugduno-Batavi 1: 124–125
4. United States Department of Agriculture. Plant Inventory No. 168: PI 265914. Received June 2, 1960
5. Burnett, D. 1984. The cultivated Alocasia. Aroideana 7(3–4): 68–162.