Monstera dubia (Kunth) Engl. & K.Krause
SUMMARY
Stout climber to 25 m, often with fertile hanging shoots; the adult leaves drooping. Seedling: a stolon-like creeper, 1 – 2 mm in diameter, to 2 m long. Juvenile: shingle plant, the lamina cordate, the sinus 5 – 10 mm deep, the apex mucronate; often variegated with silver flecks. Adult stem: elliptic in cross section, roughly warty or tuberculate, rarely smooth, dark green to tan, with a thick cuticle; internodes 3 – 10 cm long, 1 – 2 cm thick and 1.5 -3.0 cm wide; axillary bud in depression which is extended into a sulcus the length of the internode. Petiole: warty or tuberculate at the base or along its length, 20 – 55 cm long, vaginate to the geniculum, the sheath wings neatly deciduous, the geniculum 4 – 7 cm long. Lamina: oblong-ovate, falcate and oblique, coriaceous, dull dark green above, paler below, 20 – 100 cm long, 13 – 50 cm wide, 1 + ½ - 2 times longer than wide; the earliest adult leaves entire and some individuals mature in this state, later leaves pinnatifid, the larger pinnatifid and with 1 – 3 rows of elliptic perforations per side, the perforations 2 – 8 cm long, the pinnae truncate; the leaf base rounded to subcordate with a sinus 1 – 2 cm deep, never broadly cordate, the apex acute; primary lateral veins 9 – 18 in number, cream-colored and prominent abaxially, furrowed adaxially, the secondary lateral veins reticulate. Peduncle: tuberculate, 0.8 – 1.4 cm thick, terete, 5 – 9 cm long. Spathe: thickly coriaceous, pink abaxially, white adaxially, obovate, 6 – 12 cm tall, 4 – 6 cm across, shortly mucronate, or blunt at the apex, sometimes becoming curled-reflexed and splitting longitudinally before abscission. Flowering spadix: white, 5 – 10 cm long, 1.5 – 2.5 cm thick, the pistils bluntly truncate. Fruiting spadix: 7 – 14 cm long, 3.5 – 5.5 cm thick, pale yellow, the stylar portion of the pistils peeling off individually or in loosely fused groups to reveal the seeds in a gray pulp. Seeds: brown, oblong, 6 – 8 mm long, 4 – 5 mm wide, 2.0 – 3.5 mm thick, the embryo turquoise blue in color.