New Caladium Cultivars ‘Dots Delight’ and ‘Wonderland’

Abstract

Caladiums are ornamental aroids valued for their vibrant and morphologically diverse foliage. Grower surveys indicated that they planted more acres of lance-leaved cultivars in recent decades to accommodate rising consumer demand. The caladium breeding program at the UF/IFAS Gulf Coast Research and Education Center has been developing new lance-leaved cultivars that can produce attractive, robust plants with many bright, colorful leaves and improved tuber yield potential. The program has recently released two new lance-leaved cultivars. ‘Dots Delight’ is well suited for use in sunny landscapes, having excellent tolerance to sunburn and strong resistance to the leaf spot disease. Though they may need one to two additional weeks to produce potted plants, tuber yield potential is intermediate to high. ‘Wonderland’ is well suited for potted plant production in sunny or shady landscapes or gardens and has showed good leaf color display, sunburn tolerance, and leaf health.

Keywords

• Caladiums
• plant breeding
• breeding methods
• cultivars
• comtainer-grown plants
• nursery crops