There are only a few good Summer-time pot plant subjects, and the fancy-leaved caladium is neither the last nor the least of these. The caladiums are a glorious, colorful tribe of hybrid tuberous plants, belonging to that great group of aroids, known to gardeners as “elephants-ears.” Indeed, many plant lovers in the lower South know them only as “colored elephants-ears.” The common “elephants-car” of our grandmother’s canna bed is usually listed as Colocasia esculentum, and is presumably edible.
The fancy-leaved caladiums that we know in the American trade come from Brazil, via the hands of various hybridizers, whose work seems to have been almost forgotten in the last quarter century. Accounts of their achievements can only be found in the files of dusty magazines of the period of 40 and 50 years ago. Important among the records of the time are the series of articles written by the late Dr. Henry Nehrling, then of Gotha, Fla., pioneer plantsman of Florida and the leading North American hybridizer in his lifetime. He introduced many dozens of fine varieties, some of them still of outstanding value in the caladium world today.
Recent years have seen an increase in the popularity and appreciation of the caladiums, and before long there will doubtless be a caladium society which will catalogue and describe the existing material to fill a great need in modern horticulture. Today there are still hundreds of varieties of caladiums available in the collections of American growers and fanciers, but very few of them are found under their true names in the bulb trade. Probably the bulb trade offers less than 20 varieties in commercial quantities. A few small commercial collectors have stocks of perhaps a hundred. On many of these the identification is uncertain.
Dr. Nehrling at Gotha, grew 200,000 caladium plants yearly during the first decade of the 20th century, according to his writings. More than 2,000 named varieties and separate seedlings under test were included. People who remember the masses of brilliant foliage which greeted the visitor to his lath houses say that the first sight was positively overwhelming for the sheer beauty of the exotic color patterns of the leaves.
The caladium is useful as a pot plant or for bedding, and not least for decorative foliage to use in arrangements and in vases around the house. The bulbs are purchased in late Winter or Spring, and started into growth in pots of rich soil in a warm room or greenhouse, sometimes the tubers being “started” first in flats of carefully watered peat and sand. In pots, six to eight inch sizes are best, and in the South where containers are more informal, it’s ten to one they will be found in cans. They seem to like the non-porosity of the metal container, provided the drainage is good.
However, they do excellently in clay pots. The soil should be about two-thirds good garden loam with one-third rotted manure, and with enough coarse sand to assure good drainage. Finely pulverized peat, especially the carex type, or well-rotted compost, will do excellently. The writer grows them in a mixture of sifted carex peat and coarse building sand, with sifted leaf mold loam from the woods added, along with some of the dried, sterilized, pulverized cow manure now available at fertilizer stores. This is used at the rate of a gallon canful of the manure to the washtubful of the mixture. This seems to promote rapid growth, brilliant colors and abundant foliage. The use of the commercially prepared manure avoids the weed seeds found so annoyingly in most rotted manures. This formula seems to have all the effectiveness of the older mixes using “well-rotted manure,” always a problem in these days when dairies are fewer and farther off.
The late Julius A. Peterson, a famous Cincinnati florist of several decades ago, told the writer he saw his first magnificent showing of fancy-leaved caladiums at the Philadelphia centennial exposition in 1876, and fell in love with them then. Some caladium enthusiast should check the horticultural records of this great fair to gain more information.
Dr. Nehrling’s awakening to their great possibilities in the field of American horticulture came at the Chicago World’s Fair of 1899., where he viewed a showy collection of 100 varieties exhibited by the “Caladium King” of the time, Adolph Lietze of Rio de Janeiro. A transplanted German, he undertook the hybridizing of these gay and festive plants in the friendly climate of their native land, using, however, the best varieties obtainable in Europe at that time as his starting stock. Lietze must have introduced more than 1,000 named varieties, a few of them still famous and found in the trade today as Rio de Janeiro, Hortulania, Mrs. John Laing, Itapocu, Aguape, Bahia, etc.
The first American caladium hybridizer is reputedly another German plantsman, Adolph Jaenicke, who operated at the Missouri Botanical Garden around the early 1900’s. Besides Dr. Nehrling, the late Theodore L. Mead of Oviedo, Fla., his friend and co-experimenter in Florida horticulture, originated a number of fine caladium varieties, including Pliny W. Reasoner, Mrs. Theodore L. Mead (Edith Mead), Charles T. Simpson, Hildegard Nehrling, Mrs. Jennie S. Perkins, Bertha S. Eisele, Blanche Wise, D. M. Cook, etc.
The first recorded caladium hybridizer was the eminent Louis Van Houtte of France, in the 50’s of the 19th century. He had only a few caladium species from the wilds available ? C. bicolor, first reported in 1789, and C. chantini, hurnboldti, baraquini and verscholfelti, the later ones collected by two French plant explorers just. previously.
The rather dim and dusty history of the caladium indicates that the first hybrids were shown at the great French Exposition of 1867, and one of them was named Triomphe de l’Exposition, a vigorous and attractive variety still found in the trade 83 years afterward!
Van Houtte was succeeded as the leading European caladium breeder by Alfred Bleu, creator of the distinguished and popular variety Candidum, also still available and fortunately one of the most valuable and distinct varieties known, chalky white with green veins and border. Candidum may be called the great caladium of the past century, and today there is no other able to challenge it. The writer has been unable to learn the year of its introduction. Many of the Bleu varieties went into the Lietze strain. Other hybridizers who followed on the continent were C. J. Bause of England, Johann Luther, Jacob Weiss and most important, Richard Hoffman, whose work continued down into the days before World War I.
Hoffman’s varieties included Rising Sun, the spectacular Marie Moir, a red-speckled Candidum type which he sold for $100.00 in 1903, Thomas Tomlinson, Scarlet Pimpernel, Red Ensign, Ace of Hearts, etc., some of them still popular today. He was a wealthy East Indian rubber plantation engineer, and sometimes grew 25,000 caladium seedlings a year in the greenhouses of his English estate. The variety Thomas Tomlinson was named for his head gardener who did all the growing of the tubers.
Dr. Nehrling’s varieties included Mrs. IV. B. Haldeman, perhaps the finest caladium variety available today, Zee Munson, Mrs. Fannie S. Munson, Mrs. Arno H. Nehrling, Mrs. Henry Nehrling, Betty Nehrling, Dr. George Tyrrell, Jesse M. Thayer, Stuart H. Anderson, Marion A. McAdow, Richard F. Deckert, etc.
Of recent moment is the development of the arrow and lance type of fancy-leaved culadiums, which were first grown by Lietze and Mead, especially the latter’s attractive red type, “E. 0. Orpet,” mentioned by Dr. Nehrling 40 years ago as most outstanding of the Mead seedlings of this type. For some years, several Tampa, Fla., women hybridizers, including Mrs. T. S. Freeman, Mrs. A. J. Weir and Mrs. D. G. Simpson, have grown new types.
These latest innovations in the arrow and lance type are the result of Mead’s original crosses between the narrow-leaved specks, C. albanense and C. venosum speciosum, and the standard caladium varieties. The work has brought the highly colored and pleasingly patterned forms of the large fancy-leaved caladiums into the interesting and intriguing narrow leaves and dwarf growth of the former. As Dr. Nehrling pointed out years ago, they are something extra special for table decorations in vases and bowls, mainly because of their unusual decorative qualities and small proportions.
The arrow and lance types are mostly small, under one foot in height. but a few have larger growth habits. In this lesser stature they are like the rare and lovely diminutive species C. humboldti (C. argyrites), which has silvery white and green spotted foliage and is a true gem as a decorative pot-subject in Summer, seldom growing over six or e;glit inches tall. The more dwarf forms of the arrow and lance caladiums are similarly of the utmost delicacy and desirability, and are the latest sensation of the Florida bulb fanciers.
Caladium have only a few enemies, strong sunlight; “wet feet,” which induces sclerotia fungus rots, root knot, cold weather, hard winds and beating rains. They prefer part shade and a protected location, as under oak trees, where the sunlight will be filtered, and they will have shelter from hard rains and windstorms. When warm weather has safely arrived they can he planted out in garden beds. In such locations, North or South, it is best to start them inside in pots. Due to susceptibility to the root knot nematode, they should always be grown in clean or sterilized soil.
