Keeping with the exotic theme here is one of my favourite plants that copes well with heavy rain and muggy atmospeheres interspersed with sunny moments.If you prefer the Latin name they are known as Colocasia Esculenta
This is an absolutely fabulous exotic with enormous leaves up to 30cm across by 90cm long. The leaves are held on thick stalks a meter or more above the ground. More unusual varieties can be purchased from specialist grows such as ‘Black Magic’ which, as its name implies, has deliciously purplish-black leaves.
It is borderline hardy taking several degrees of frost if well mulched otherwise do dig the plants up and store over winter like potatoes. I kept mine in a pot located in a light, very warm room last winter and managed to have new leaves appearing all through the dark days of December and January.
It can grow to around 1-1.5m and loves full sun to dappled shade in any well-drained garden soil with lots of extra organic matter. The soil needs to be kep moist at all times so do mulch heavily to retain moisture.
These stunning plants provide a really full-on jungle effect and take extremely well to container growing as you can see. Find out more at
http://www.gardeningchannel.com/growing-elephant-ear-plants/
October 7th, 2008 at 12:44 am
I had a picture of Colocasias on my blog – how different a response I got from one of my blogging friends in India! She complained about these “sprouting up” everywhere in her garden after the monsoon…