Colocasia esculenta var. antiquorum 'Illustris'

This one comes with a paper trail. 'Illustris' was first described in 1873 by William Bull, the Chelsea nurseryman, who listed the plant as Alocasia illustris in his catalogue of new and rare plants and sold them out of his glasshouses at 536 King's Road. Nobody knows quite where they came from. Colocasia esculenta is a restless, variable species, and Bull had rivers of tropical material moving through the place, so the likeliest story is that he caught a dark-leaved sport among the green, liked what he saw, and kept dividing the stock. Every 'Illustris' in cultivation descends from that one Victorian decision. A 150-year-old clone, still in production.

The drama is all in the leaves. They come up an ordinary bright green and then darken through the season to a deep brownish-purple that reads near-black, the veins left behind in vivid green as though someone traced the architecture and never filled it in. Broad and heart-shaped on long petioles, they hang slightly downward, and in a stand of three or five they stop looking like plants and start looking like set dressing.

They want what taro has always wanted: heat, full sun, and far more water than seems decent. Rich soil and a root run that never dries will carry them to full size through the worst of summer, and they're entirely content grown aquatically, at a pond margin or standing in a few inches of water. Hardier than the tropical look lets on, too. Across the Southeast the corms will often sit out the winter under a blanket of mulch and return on their own.

By August, when the rest of the border has thrown in the towel, this is the one still unrolling new leaves the size of dinner plates, exactly as they did in Bull's glasshouses a century and a half ago. That tends to end the conversation.

Photo courtesy of Skylark.