ALOCASIA LONGILOBA ‘PUTZEYSII’
CULTIVAR DESCRIPTION:
Alocasia longiloba 'Putzeysii' was sold to the Victorian world on the beauty of its young leaves: ovate-sagittate blades — broader than the narrow arrowheads of typical plants — brilliantly colored as they unfurl, the surface netted between widely spaced primary veins with a fine tracery of pale veinlets, the reverse a deep maroon.² In the modern understanding it is the forest-floor form of Alocasia longiloba in Sumatra, told from the rock-dwelling 'Watsoniana' by its curved primary veins and terrestrial habit — and where the two meet, they blur.³
'Putzeysii' is a named form of Alocasia longiloba.¹ The epithet is a legacy Latin-form name, retained as a cultivar epithet as the cultivar code allows for names of its era, and the old trade name leoniae is recorded as a synonym.⁴
HISTORY:
The plant arrived twice-named before it was named at all. Introduced by Linden and staged at the Antwerp exhibition of August 1881, it "excited the lively attention of amateurs" under the provisional name A. Lindeni — the label that still haunts old keys and catalogs.² Months later, in Linden's own journal, N. E. Brown described it as Alocasia putzeysii, from a leaf alone — "Inflorescentia mihi ignota," the inflorescence unknown to me — and the accompanying chromolithograph did the selling.² The name was a memorial: Jules Putzeys, Secretary-General at the Belgian Ministry of Justice and a great promoter of botany, had died in Brussels that January 2nd, and the same volume that described his plant carried his obituary.² Linden released the plant to commerce on April 15th, 1882.²
The provenance corrected itself in print within the year: announced as Javan, the species was reassigned to Sumatra at Brown's own request in a later page of the same volume.² Botany has agreed ever since.³
No member of the complex worked harder in the breeding houses. The French and Belgian crosses of the 1880s and 1890s reached for 'Putzeysii' again and again: Alocasia 'Luciani', 'Pucciana', 'Conspicua', 'Rodigasiana', and 'M. Martin Cahuzac' — the last a backcross onto 'Putzeysii' itself — all carry its name in their recorded parentages, and the 1890 French growers rated typical longiloba "much like Alocasia Putzeysii, but less beautiful."⁴,⁵ A century later the plant had become a collector's want-ad: "looking for… putzeysii… would love to trade or buy."⁶
CONFUSED WITH: 'Watsoniana', perpetually — some Victorian authors sank one into the other, and Burnett had to argue them apart.⁴ The working characters are the vein course (curved in 'Putzeysii', straight in 'Watsoniana') and the ground it grows on (soil, not rock).³ The old exhibition name A. Lindeni is this plant, not a distinct one.²
HYBRIDS:
Alocasia ‘Kerchoveana’ (Alocasia longiloba ‘Putzeysii’ x Alocasia longiloba ‘Korthalsii’)
Alocasia ‘Luciani’ (Alocasia longiloba ‘Korthalsii’ x Alocasia longiloba ‘Putzeysii’)
Alocasia ‘Pucciana’ (Alocasia longiloba ‘Putzeysii’ 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. Brown, N.E. 1882. Alocasia Putzeysi. L'Illustration Horticole 29: 11, with plate
4. Burnett, D. 1984. The cultivated Alocasia. Aroideana 7(3–4): 68–162.
5. Les Alocasia, culture et description. Journal de la Société Nationale d'Horticulture de France, April 1890.