Alocasia (Alocasia x mortfontanensis)

The CoL lists it as a species, accepted name as: Alocasia mortfontanensis: http://www.catalogueoflife.org...

Lin, the CoL never includes the x, but we do. Scroll down on this page and you'll see that it says "hybrid taxon." A hybrid taxon has the "x" included in our database.

http://www.catalogueoflife.org...

Thanks zuzu ... I missed that!

zuzu said:Lin, the CoL never includes the x, but we do. Scroll down on this page and you'll see that it says "hybrid taxon." A hybrid taxon has the "x" included in our database.

http://www.catalogueoflife.org...

If that is the case, it is an error. An "x" preceding a lower-case name of a hybrid indicates a grex and not one unique hybrid. A grex is the product of a specific cross. It can be a specific cross that occurred once or that was repeated and includes all the plants produced by the cross regardless of their appearance, which can be extremely different.

For example, since several siblings of LariAnn Garner's Alocasia x portora survived and at least two are in circulation now, they are correctly referred to as members of a grex. However, her cross of Alocasia odora with Alocasia gageana consists now of only one plant that was selected from the products of that cross and was released as a single cultivar. Such unique cultivars are shown upper case and in single quotes (inverted commas) after the genus: Alocasia 'Calidora.'

This is consistent with the International Code of Nomenclature for Cultivated Plants.

plantladylin said:https://garden.org/plants/view/751467/Alocasia-Alocasia-x-mortfontanensis/

The CoL lists it as a species, accepted name as: Alocasia mortfontanensis: http://www.catalogueoflife.org...

This is incorrect. The Kew-MoBot collaboration, Plants of the World Online, lists this plant as an artificial hybrid. It does not clarify that this hybrid is extinct.

The cross (or a similar one, since it is not possible to tell which form of longiloba was used in the original cross) was repeated by Salvatore Mauro at his Amazon Nursery in or shortly prior to 1953 and yielded the hybrid we now know as Alocasia 'Amazonica.'

The hybrid taxa listed in the Catalogue of Life (and in our database, because the CoL is our primary source of taxonomic information) are spontaneous hybrids, occurring in the wild with no human intervention. We do not list man-made hybrids unless they have a cultivar name.

SilkKnoll said:This is incorrect. The Kew-MoBot collaboration, Plants of the World Online, lists this plant as an artificial hybrid. It does not clarify that this hybrid is extinct.

The cross (or a similar one, since it is not possible to tell which form of longiloba was used in the original cross) was repeated by Salvatore Mauro at his Amazon Nursery in or shortly prior to 1953 and yielded the hybrid we now know as Alocasia 'Amazonica.'

Also, if you open the entry on the COL, it clearly states that it is a hybrid taxon:
http://www.catalogueoflife.org...

Yes, the CoL shows the Hybrid taxon: A. longiloba × A. sanderi

Is there any difference between Alocasia x mortfontanensis, syn. Alocasia x amazonica, and Alocasia 'Amazonica'? Should the records be combined?

Considering that many other genera and ICRAs recognise the natural and man-made hybrids as being distinct, I am comfortable keeping the two entries separate (based on Robert's/SilkKnoll's comment above that the extant plants are from a 1950s man-made cross):

Alocasia (Alocasia x mortfontanensis)
African Mask (Alocasia 'Amazonica')

Alocasia mortfontanensis is a cross that dates at least from 1890, and is mentioned in the 1891 Revue horticole as a cross between A. sanderiana and A. lowii (now A. longiloba). It is said to resemble both of its parents.
https://www.biodiversitylibrar...

I don't know the origin of the 'amazonica' name, but CoL lists A. amazonica as a synonym of A. mortfontanensis, and it's possible that the Amazon nursery in Florida sold this hybrid & renamed it?

Ah, now, I just found this old thread that clears everything up (not really):
The thread "The difference between Alocasia 'Poly' and A. 'Mandalay'" in Philodendrons, Elephant Ears, and Other Aroids forum

My takeaway is that A. mortfontanensis should be used to describe plants with A. sanderiana and A. longiloba as parents. Alocasia 'Amazonica', however, seems to be a name used for several different hybrids. In theory, they should be synonymous, but in practice they may or may not be the same.