Alocasia Black Velvet Albo/Pink Variegated

Alocasia Black Velvet Albo/Pink Variegated is the dark, velvet-looking Black Velvet leaf with pink and cream breaking through it. The adult plant sample shows near-black leaves with bright pink and cream patches and pale green veins, while the plantlets start as green leaves marbled with cream.

A Velvet Leaf That Feels Smooth

Black Velvet looks like velvet but is smooth to the touch. The upper surface is a dark green-black, the underside a rich purple, and the veins run pale. In this variegated form the pink and cream patches sit on top of that dark blade, which is why the contrast in the sample photo is so sharp.

One Plant Behind Nearly Every Black Velvet

Alocasia reginula 'Black Velvet' entered the trade in the early 1990s, when Scott Hyndman sourced a single plant from the Lyon Arboretum in Hawaii, which had reportedly received it from a Japanese collector who brought it back from Borneo. That one plant went into tissue culture and became the foundation of essentially every Black Velvet grown today. The pink and albo forms are later sports of that line, and their own origin is not recorded.

A Wild Home Confirmed Only in 2021

The species, Alocasia reginula, grows on shaded limestone cliffs and rocky slopes in the Tabin Wildlife Reserve in Sabah, Malaysian Borneo. Wild populations were only located and documented in 2021, so the plant was in cultivation for decades before anyone confirmed where it came from.

Green and Cream First, Pink and Black Later

The plantlets pictured are young, with green leaves marbled in cream, and give little hint of the adult sample. Expect the dark base and the pink to develop as the plant matures, and expect the balance of pink, cream and black to differ from leaf to leaf.

Humid, Shaded, and Never Soggy

It is a compact plant that does well in bright, indirect light, high humidity, and a chunky, well-draining aroid mix kept lightly moist, much like the rocky slopes it comes from. Pink and cream tissue scorch quickly in direct sun.

A Sterile Plantlet, Not the Adult Pictured

This plantlet is produced through tissue culture, propagated in a sterile lab rather than cut from a mature plant. The adult sample is for reference only, and the colouring develops with growth.

Add Alocasia Black Velvet Albo/Pink Variegated to your collection for a velvet-looking dark leaf with pink and cream patches, grown from culture and shipped from ThaiFusion Botanica in Thailand.