PlantFiles: Super Size Elephant Ear
Colocasia gigantea 'Thailand Giant Strain'

We have grown Colocasia gigantea for a while.
This Colocasia gigantea 'Thailand Giant Strain' blows it out of the water.
A month or so ago we bought a 3' tall plant in a gallon pot.
Re-potted to a 36" pot manured and composted heavily.
Water daily.
We are now looking at 32" (shoulder to tip) leaves and a spathe and it's only the first of July!
We still have at least 3 months of growing to go here in Cincinnati.

Didn't really know what I was purchasing, but looked good. Two years later - amazing! Brown trunk is 3" tall and overall plant reaches nearly 12'. Planted east side of house, Long Beach, California

In North Carolina, we can keep this zone 8b plant alive over the winter by covering it with 1' of leaves and stuff during the winter. It does not start growing again until July, but by September it is huge!

I bought the tiniest start from an ebay seller last year. Potted it into a 24" pot, placed it under an oak tree where it gets direct morning sun and in the afternoon has bright light, but no direct sun. Summers are hot, and dry here. Also, keep it out of winds so the leaves don't shread.

This puppy grew so large!!! I have a photo of my hubby hiding under a leaf. Everyone comments on this plant.

AND, it overwintered outside in zone 8b. We live in a two story home, so I put the pot on the ground floor, against the house, protected under the second story's deck, facing South. February gets down to 22°F here, I thought for sure it died. It was a blackened stub and there were no signs of life...but it came back in early May!! I bought another this year as no daughters came out last year. I will always have this plant in my collection.

This is one of our favorite colocasia. It grows extremely fast and the leaves get quite large within just a few months. Spath's will bloom in rows of four and produce large seed pods (if pollinated) beneath each spath. Once they burst you can harvest the seeds, which will be in dozens (if not hundreds) of small "pouches." Each pouch holds dozens of tiny tomato sized seeds that can be planted and will sprout within 2-3 weeks. By three months they'll often have 3-4 leaves and be well on their way to becoming adults in another growing season or two.

This huge strain of the giant elephant ear was grown from wild collected seed (PES 1003B) from Kanchanaburi Province, Thailand, in 2003 by former PDN research manager Petra Schmidt. In the wild, the plants reached a massive 9' tall, which is much larger than the clone of C. gigantea that we currently grow. For us, each individual leaf grows in excess of 5' long x 4' wide. Each seedling will differ slightly, but massive plants will be the result. In foliage, the leaves are an attractive glaucous-grey which is typical of this species. From an early age, the plants are adorned with clusters of dramatically large, pleasantly scented, white flowers.