Alocasia nebula
A. Hay 2000
Here I cite what I got about this plant from Peter Boyce when I asked about the differences between this species and A. reginae
"Alocasia nebula is a large plant, up to 70 cm when fully grown.
The petiole are erect to erecto-spreading, with the lamina held at downwards angle to the petiole.
The leaf colour is medium grey with darker areas and the leaves can get up to 45 cm x 25 cm.
Although A. nebula is now pretty well established in cultivation, its exact origins are obscure.
In the mid-1990s Josef Bogner and myself and independently Alistair Hay,
saw this plant growing at the Semenggoh Botanical Research Centre in Kuching, Sarawak and none of us could identify it.
We independently asked the staff where the plant originated but none was sure.
Anyhow, it, along with most of the more spectacular Sarawak Alocasia, remained undescribed until Hay's revision of 1998
(when it was treated as insufficiently known and called just Sp. A) and finally received a formal name in 2000.
The remarkable thing is that it is still unknown in the wild.
Certainly we have looked for it with some vigour, finding some spectacular new species along the way, but as yet with no success for nebula.
The group it belongs too are often associated with particular geologies in very specific localities
(i.e., A. reginae on the Mulu limestone, A. reginula on limestone in E Sabah,
A. melo on ultrabasics in E Sabah, A. venusta on the Niah limestones, etc.)
and thus it is very probable that A. nebula is found only in a very specific place on a particular geology."
Its former name was 
Alocasia guttata var. imperialis.
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| photo © Boca Joe™ |
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This form is known as A. nebula 'Imperialis'. The leaf blade is about 30 cm long.
photo © Helmut Reisenberger, 2005  |
page created on 2007-10-11
last updated on 2013-02-10 |
Asianflora: Alocasia nebula