Wheres the best place to plant Colocasia's??

[vivi]

HI My Wilco Colocasias are growing well,and getting a bit cramped in their pots,as the weather has warmed up dare I plant them outside yet? If so do they do well in full sun/shade help please!
Thanks

[Dave Brown]

My big Mammoth last year was grown with miday shade through reed screening. It is a bit of a dilema... Grown in full sun is warmer so you might get faster growth, but the leaves may be smaller as it does not need as much leaf area to get the light it needs.

Best place might be the warmest lightly shaded place you can find, but then feeding and watering kicks in

[keith]

We've got a nice spot in our garden, you can have visiting rights.

Keith.

[Dave Brown]

Love the location, Keith ...

[tropical-pete]

Well I'll be putting one of mine outside over the weekend, and then planted in a week or two in the ground - this one's leaves seem to be getting a little smaller although that might just be because I've taken it off the heat mat. The other will stay inside for another week or two, and then be potted up outside. The third one I'll probably pot up for the patio as well so I can move it around from Sun/Shade to see what suits best. I'll do some update pics on the comp. thread over the weekend.

Thanks, take care

Pete

[simon]

In my experience, having planted colocasias in the shade before, you don't get bigger leaves, just longer leggy stems as the plant is trying to push it's leaves out of the shade.

i would go for full sun.

[Andrew In Bracknell]

I'm trying both this year and I'll see what happens. Is the leggy growth in shade particularly unattractive? I'm trying a C. Illustrus in shade (going by the tag, which said sun or shade) and C. Black Magic and Tesco Eddoes in full sun.

[simon]

Andrew, not particuarly unattractive but didn't achieve full potential either.

I don't think that a plant would say "I'm in full sun, I wont make bigger leaves". I think more sun = more energy to the corm = a bigger plant = more energy to the corm = ....etc.

I can't see how nature would allow a plant to supress its own proliferation.

[Andrew In Bracknell]

The illustrus is going in that shady spot because there's nowhere else left (Libby, Melissa, I've allocated spots for the B. Sanguinea and H. Greenii), as well as my interest in how it will look being grown there.

[vivi]

We've got a nice spot in our garden, you can have visiting rights.

Keith.

Thanks for the offer Keith.

[Melissa]

I haven't forgotten Andrew, hopefully I'll get some off to you soon

Melissa

[Dave Brown]

Andrew you need to treat illustris in the same way as Black magic. In shade it stays green and is very slow. I nearly chucked mine after a season in the shade as it did nothing. Lobbed it outside in october in the sun and it it did far better.

Simon, a plant's leaf is like a solar panel, in shady conditions it requires more area, so leaves tend to be bigger. At some point it will not grow well due to lack of light, but in light shade leaves tend to be bigger and softer than in full sun. A good example is Phoenix roebelenii, grown is shade it has larger softer leaves, where as in full sun they are smaller and more spikey.

[simon]

Simon, a plant's leaf is like a solar panel, in shady conditions it requires more area, so leaves tend to be bigger. At some point it will not grow well due to lack of light, but in light shade leaves tend to be bigger and softer than in full sun. A good example is Phoenix roebelenii, grown is shade it has larger softer leaves, where as in full sun they are smaller and more spikey.

Plants that prefer full sun will put energy into driving thier leaves out of the shade. This may be by leaning outwards towards the sun or growing extended petioles to lift the leaves out of the shade. The extra energy required will be of detriment to the leaf size until it manages to find the sun. This is why (from your own admission) you get leggy colocasias when you give bottom heat that makes them think it's June when the light level says it's February or March.

This is bourn out by your Phoenix roebelenii example because the leaves are oviously very different to a colocasia and the leaflets are all the way along the petiole therefore when the plant extends the petiole (in the hope of getting it into the sun) the leaflets become more sparsly separated and although the leaf/frond as a whole is bigger, it probably contains the same quantity of leaflets and therefore the same surface area of leaf.

[Dave Brown]

Simon I used the similarity of Colocasia, Alaocasia, and P. roebelenii as they are all understory plants in jungles, so their natural growing location is in shade. I have read somewhere that Alocasia can grow just as well in 20% of full sunlight by adapting the number of receptors in use. These leaves will probably not be affected size wise by light levels, but Colocasia and roebelenii are, and rather than growing bigger leaves in shade, they grow normally, but grow smaller in full sunlight. P.roebelenii is one of the few shade growing palms that can take full overhead sun... once adjusted.

If you start Colocasia off from dormant, the leaves grow bigger all through summer reaching the max size by early october, however, my Colocasia, when grown over winter get smaller leaves from november to jan, then they get larger as light levels rise Feb /March, but once hardened off and in full sun they get smaller again, getting to their largest in October as light levels fall, once passed October there is insuffiecient light to fuel large leaves and they get smaller again. To me this suggests optimum light levels are around the equinox.

[vivi]

Thank you to everyone for their advice,going by it I have decided to plant one in sun and another in dappled shade