Once upon a time in a land probably not very far away, I had someone else buy me a plant. It was dark and made these big old leaves that looked super cool and tropical. LOVED IT. I still have that Alocasia Regal Shield, although in the intervening years a few things have changed. First of all, I learned what the name of it was, which was an act of Congress. There are SO very many different varieties of Alocasia - not to mention Colocasia - that almost every AI on the planet g

Did you know the Philodendron joepii was discovered in the wild because a guy named Joep Moonen thought it looked like it had been eaten by bugs? It's one of the rarest-looking shapes in the plant world, so when I found a pot with two of them in it near Gainesville, I just had to have it.