Curly

Portora is a made plant, and both of its parents show in every leaf. One is Alocasia odora, the night-scented elephant ear of monsoon Asia's swamp edges, with smooth-edged shields. The other is Alocasia portei of Luzon, a trunked giant to six metres whose leaves are cut deep into long lobes and crisped along every edge. Cross the two and the lobes close up into a ruffle: a broad, upright shield with a wave running all the way round it. LariAnn Garner of Aroidia Research made the cross; her selections from it are usually dated to the 1980s.