Unnatural Nature

Anthuriums have taken on a new persona to plant collectors.

The genus once known for cut flowers is now all about the foliage.

Giant velvety leaves.

Also big glossy leaves.

There are at least 1000 accepted species of anthurium and the list is constantly evolving. Last year (2025) Tom Croat published 63 new anthurium species alone. The range and diversity of the genus invites wild speculations by experts as to the total number of species, but it is safe to say that there are a lot of anthuriums.

My research shows that about 200 species of anthurium are available commercially. If one accounts for hobbyist bred material and hybrids the number of anthuriums circulating in the plant community alone are pretty intense.

The genus was once synonymous with cut flowers. Waxy red spathes in hotel lobbies, florist coolers, waiting rooms. *Anthurium andraeanum* — everywhere, forgettable. What collectors now chase is completely different: velvet, bullation, dark pigmentation, venation so pronounced it looks pressed from below. The hobby shifted inside five years. The old persona was a spathe. The new one is a leaf you want to run your hand across.

Enter: Anthurium clideimiodes

Of all the above mentioned Anthuriums there is only one that combines:

Leaf shape: cordate to ovate-cordate

Surface texture: strongly bullate — the tissue between veins is raised into pronounced convex blisters or pustules

Venation: pinnate with strongly impressed primary and secondary veins creating the quilted appearance; veins sunken adaxially (upper surface)

Color: deep dark green, nearly melanistic adaxially

Surface quality: coriaceous (leathery), appearing matte with slight velutinous (velvety) quality

Margin: entire

Apex: acute to shortly acuminate

Moisture: guttation droplets visible along midrib — the plant is actively pushing water through hydathodes, a sign of healthy root pressure

Growth Habit: hemiepipmyte scandent, uses roots to climb and cling to surface while retaining roots in ground-level media.

This plant — Anthurium clidemioides, a clone collected from the foothills of the Fila de Matama — belongs to section Polyphyllium: six species total, the earliest divergent lineage in the entire genus. Its ancestors split from the rest of Anthurium roughly 10 to 11 million years ago, during the Late Miocene, while the mountains of Central America were still rising from the sea.