ALOCASIA LONGILOBA ‘VEITCHII’
CULTIVAR DESCRIPTION:
Alocasia longiloba 'Veitchii' wears the boldest petioles in the species: green densely striped and scratched with dark lines — a marking already recorded in its first description and fixed in Latin four years later, when Schott wrote of petioles "densely striolate with long dark-green lines."²,³ The blade itself is a foot or more of peltate arrowhead, firm-textured, dark bronze-green above with a narrow silvered zone along the principal veins and a pale border, rich deep purple beneath.²,³
'Veitchii' is a named form of Alocasia longiloba — so close to the heart of the species that modern botany folds it into typical longiloba rather than granting it a form of its own.⁷ Its tiger-striped petioles are the working distinction from 'Lowii', whose petioles are plain. The epithet is a legacy Latin-form name, retained as a cultivar epithet as the cultivar code allows for names of its era.
HISTORY:
'Veitchii' was the first of the entire longiloba complex to reach cultivation. Thomas Lobb sent it from Borneo to the Veitch nursery, and on September 8th, 1859, the Horticultural Society's Floral Committee awarded Messrs. Veitch & Son of Chelsea a First-Class Certificate for it.² Two days' printing later John Lindley described it as Caladium (?) Veitchii — question mark his own — admitting with unusual candor that "not having flowered there is no saying whether it is a Caladium or not. Nevertheless, a name has become necessary to it."²
The name found its genus in 1863, when Schott transferred it to Alocasia, citing Veitch's Bornean plant and a Java specimen collected by Kuhl and van Hasselt — the specimen on which the name's type now rests.³,⁷ By 1864 it was flowering in Berlin, in the Reichenheim collection, and the German garden press ran it side by side with the newly arrived plant then called Alocasia lowii, finding leaves and inflorescences "extraordinarily similar."⁴ Veitch's own breeders put it to work: their hybrid Alocasia 'Intermedia' was raised in the 1860s from seed on the typical plant fertilized with 'Veitchii' pollen.⁵
Then came the long demotion. Hibberd was already explaining in 1870 that the plant "in due time proved to be an Alocasia,"⁶ Engler reduced it to a variety of the plant then called Alocasia lowii, and in 1998 Alistair Hay folded it into Alocasia longiloba altogether.⁷ The old variety name carried cultivars of its own — Burnett records an 'Argentea' and a lime-green 'Viridescens'⁸ — and the swarm sold under it may still hide real biology: in 2002 plants sold as lowii 'Veitchii' measured markedly higher DNA content than those sold as lowii 'Grandis'.⁹
CONFUSED WITH: From its first years 'Veitchii' has been tangled with 'Lowii' — the two were compared leaf-for-leaf and flower-for-flower as early as 1864.⁴ The petiole settles it: boldly striped in 'Veitchii', plain in 'Lowii'. Burnett also cautions that the authority for the old variety name is often misprinted.⁸
HYBRIDS:
Alocasia ‘Gaulainii’ (Alocasia longiloba ‘Lowii Veitchii’ x Alocasia cuprea)
Alocasia ‘Intermedia’ (Alocasia longiloba x Alocasia longiloba ‘Veitchii’)
Alocasia ‘Sedenii’ (Alocasia longiloba ‘Lowii Veitchii’ x Alocasia cuprea)
REFERENCES:
1. Plants of the World Online, Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew — Plants of the World Online, Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew — Alocasia longiloba Miq.
3. Schott, H.W. 1863. Alocasia veitchi. Annales Musei Botanici Lugduno-Batavi 1: 125
5. Flore des Serres et des Jardins de l'Europe 17: 168 (1867–1868)
6. Hibberd, S. 1870. New and Rare Beautiful-Leaved Plants: 49
8. Burnett, D. 1984. The cultivated Alocasia. Aroideana 7(3–4): 68–162.