Sinningia sp. "Itaguassu"

Pronunciation and location

Itaguassu is an English-spelling rendering of the Brazilian placename Itaguaçu.  According to the Wikipedia stub page, it is a municipality in the state of Espírito Santo, along the Atlantic coast.

Based on the Brazilian Portuguese spelling, stress should fall on the final syllable: Ee-ta-gwa-SUE.

Seedlings

The seedlings bear a strong resemblance to those of S. aghensis.  Compare that picture to this one.

This picture was taken 16 March 2011.  Older seedlings are shown below.

A seedling of this species grows quite slowly at first.  This appears to be a result of the plant's putting most of its effort into growing its tuber.

This picture shows the intense red leafbacks of the seedling.  It also shows the tuber, which is quite large for the size of the plant.  My guess is that 90% of the mass of this plant is in the tuber.

The early growth of this species and the dark coloration on the upper leaf surface strongly resemble the corresponding characteristics of Sinningia aghensis.

Mauro's site describes the degree of difficulty of this plant as "medium".  Since this is the same degree of difficulty he assigns to the doomed Sinningia canastrensis, one fears the worst.

This picture was taken on 20 September 2011.  The plant is in a 3.5-inch pot.

The resemblance to Sinningia aghensis is very striking at this stage.

This picture shows a different seedling.  It was also taken on 20 September 2011.  The plant is in a 2.5-inch pot.

This plant has an elongated wiry stem which eventually bears large dark leaves.  At the time of the picture, leaf length was about 8 cm [3 inches].