Alocasia flabellifera

Alocasia species are very difficult to collect and keep as herbarium specimens due to their size, their watery nature, the reproductive parts often dissolving, the plants continuing to grow in the press and sticking to paper and dermestid beetles often being attracted to them. Only three herbarium specimens exist for A. flabellifera, which would suggest it is rare, under-collected or data deficient. However, Hay visited Papua New Guinea in 1988 and 1989, with the specific aim of studying the Alocasia species and described A. flabellifera as a massive species similar to A. macrorhizos which was frequent in the Madang area in regrowth and in plantations as a weed (Hay 1990).

Hay noted that this species occurs in the areas visited by various German collectors in at the beginning of the 1900s. It is not known whether they collected this species or not, as most of their material was lost in Berlin in the second World War. In addition, A. flabellifera is difficult to recognise in the herbarium and in all likelihood was mistaken for A. macrorrhizos. Both A. flabellifera and A. macrorrhizos grow in abundance in the Lae Botanical Garden.