ARELIA BLACK

Description

Aralias grow in a wide variety of leaf forms and colouration. Common leaf forms are the familiar elegant, lacy leaves of the Ming, the rounded leaflets of the chicken gizzard, those of the large, aptly named ‘dinner plate’ aralia and the tightly crinkled leaves of the black or ‘spinach leaf’ aralia.
Variegations run from gold, cream or white, to solid green, and range from dark green, tending to almost black with some being nearly burgundy- coloured in their leaves and petioles.

The really attractive aspects, however, are the massive woody trunks and sweeping, curving branches and heavy, dense and somewhat shaggy foliage of the specimen plants. Aralia plants have large bipinnate (doubly compound) leaves clustered at the ends of their stems or branches; in some species the leaves are covered with bristles. The stems of some woody species are quite prickly, as in Aralia spinosa. The flowers are whitish or greenish occurring in terminal panicles, and the spherical dark purple berry-like fruits are popular with birds. The trunks of specimen Aralia Plants, thick, woody, and curving are often unique and exotic looking. When small, an Aralia Plant can be used as a table plant and later as an impressive floor plant.