Monstera deliciosa 'Thai Constellation'
Monstera ‘Thai constellation’ took the world by storm in the mid to post Covid years. At the time indoor plants were undergoing a resurgence that started just pre-Covid then went ballistic as we were all shut down. The millennials suddenly found the pleasure of filling the home with large, leafy plants and also found that there were many rare cultivars coming onto the market. Australia has strict quarantine laws which makes it very hard to import live plants. The laws are getting tougher and the people importing fewer.
Let’s go back 50 years to Thailand when the attractive plant from Mexico and Central America, Monstera deliciosa arrived in the Thai plant industry. It also arrived in the sixties/seventies into Australia as Swiss Cheese Plant. Sometime in the next decade or two a cream variegated form turned up. This is quite common in plants that are in mass production. Sometimes the mutation doesn’t get noticed or if it does then it cannot be stabilised for mass production.
There is a lot of conjecture about the origin and it is hard to pick out truth from myth. There is a series of articles saying it was genetically created in a laboratory around 2000. There are others that say this happened around 2010. Both theories are a bit fanciful to try and give the plant more mystique. There are numerous cases of large indoor plants having naturally occurring variegations from all over the world.
The most likely storey is that the plant occurred in mid to late eighties and as variegated plants were not particularly popular it was ignored. Variegated plants have been around for a hundred plus years and are natural mutations. They don’t normally survive without man taking cuttings and asexually propagating for mass production. During the nineties with the advent of PVR and advanced label production producers were able to protect and market new plants. This meant that variegated plants became quite popular with the wider gardening community.
In 2018 Kathryn Barnett importer 42 plants of the ‘new’ Monstera called Thai Constellation. There is no apparent record of anyone importing them prior to that year. These plants were small to large and the latter were mature plants with the large fenestrations that only occur in mature plants. Seedlings and plants from tissue culture generally take at least five years to produce mature foliage and then another few years to flower. Most of her plants were small and didn’t survive the fumigation and post entry quarantine. A few did and she gave Clive Larkman one nearly dead cutting from a mature plant.
He was able to keep this plant alive and eventually grow it on. That plant is now two metres long with foliage that is 60-80cm in diameter. Large fenestrations, great balance of variegation and producing cream and variegated flowers and fruit. Kathryn’s plants were either cuttings from cuttings from the original plants or cuttings from mature tissue culture. The latter is less likely to be correct as the whole process of tissue culture is really less than twenty years old as a commercial option.
Tissue culture plants in sterile agar containers are not required to go through post entry quarantine. They are 100% inspected and then released. This quickens the import process but slows down the growing as it takes around five years to show maturity. Even then it doesn’t have the presence of an original plant.
Thai Constellation has deep green foliage with star like spots cream and large blotches of cream. The leaves rarely show all green nor all cream which separates it from most of the other variegated Aroids. Our plants are cuttings from Clive’s original plant and show the mature foliage from the start. If grown well they will flower and fruit within a year or so. The fruit takes two years to ripen on the green form in the warm climates. It is unlikely to ripen here south of Queensland.
The plant is much tougher than expected. It is most suspect to over watering, direct summer sun or hard frost. All of these will produce yellow foliage – sun and frost will burn the top leaves and over watering will cause dark yellow discolouration on the old leaves. Once established in a sheltered position it will grow well outdoors in most city suburbs in Australia. The frost will cause damage but the plant will tolerate down to 2C if near a warm wall etc. The mature plants a re a statement in the garden, on the verandah or indoors.
Exotic plant that has cream flowers which occur Sep-Nov It has green w/cream foliage and prefers a filt sun position in a general soil Height: 3 to 5 Width: 2 to 3
Bulk Discount
Does not apply to this plant.
