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Description
elephant ear plant san diego Alocasia odora 'California'Alocasia odora California Alocasia odora California is a compact green elephant ear Alocasia with broad upright leaves, softly waved margins and prominent sunken veins. It has the broad green leaves typical of Alocasia odora, but stays smaller than many giant elephant ear types. Established plants often produce offsets, so a single plant can gradually form a fuller pot. The leaves are smooth green, broad and slightly oval, with softly wavy to slightly
Alocasia odora ‘California’
Alocasia odora ‘California’ is a compact green elephant-ear Alocasia with broad upright leaves, softly waved margins and prominent sunken veins. It has the broad green leaves typical of Alocasia odora, but stays smaller than many giant elephant-ear types. Established plants often produce offsets, so a single plant can gradually form a fuller pot.
The leaves are smooth green, broad and slightly oval, with softly wavy to slightly uneven margins. The midrib and primary veins are prominent and set into the leaf surface. Compared with Alocasia macrorrhizos, this plant stays more compact and has a more oval leaf shape.
Alocasia odora has a broad Asian range, from eastern India through parts of mainland and island Asia to southern Japan and Borneo. This plant has often been sold as Alocasia gageana, but Alocasia odora ‘California’ is now the better name for it.
The accepted species name, Alocasia odora (G.Lodd.) Spach, was published in 1846. The epithet odora refers to fragrance, linked with the scented flower structures of the species. ‘California’ is a cultivated name and does not mean the plant comes from California.
This plant grows larger and uses more water than small jewel Alocasia types, so it needs a steadier water supply and a more stable pot. It can work as a bright indoor floor plant, conservatory plant or sheltered warm-season outdoor plant after acclimation. It grows well indoors with bright light, root space and a stable container as the leaves increase in size.
Care
- Light for broad green leaves: Give bright indirect light. It can take gentle morning or late-day sun after acclimation, but avoid harsh midday sun behind glass.
- Watering a larger pot plant: Water when the top layer or upper 20–30% of the mix has dried. Large active plants should be watered before the whole pot dries completely.
- Cooler periods: Reduce watering when light and temperature drop. This plant is more cool-tolerant than many tender Alocasia, but a cool wet pot can still damage the base.
- Fertile open mix: Use a fertile but airy mix with bark, coco chips, perlite or pumice and a moisture-holding component.
- Stable container: Use a pot that balances the leaf weight. Increase pot size gradually as roots fill the space.
- Temperature range: Active growth is best around 18–30 °C. Keep cooler plants drier rather than wet and cold.
- Moderate humidity: Average indoor humidity is usually fine when light, warmth and watering are steady.
- Steady feeding: Feed regularly but moderately during active growth. Reduce feeding when growth slows.
- Gradual repotting: Repot when roots fill the container or the mix breaks down. Move up gradually instead of placing it straight into a very large pot.
- Offset division: Divide rooted offsets or firm rhizome sections only when each piece has roots and a clear growing point.
- Warm-season outdoor use: If used outdoors in warm weather, acclimate gradually and bring it back inside before cool wet periods.
Issues
- Soft lower stems or base: Usually cold wet substrate, oversized pots or poor drainage. Check roots before the base collapses.
- Large leaves drooping: Can come from underwatering, root loss, sudden temperature shifts or an unstable pot.
- Lower leaves yellowing: One ageing leaf is normal. Several yellow leaves at once usually point to root stress, low light or a wet pot.
- Brown margins: Drying too far, fertiliser salts, hard water or low humidity during leaf expansion can mark the edges.
- Small new leaves: Often caused by weak light, depleted substrate, restricted roots or recent division.
- Leaning growth: Large leaves can pull the plant toward the light. Rotate the pot occasionally and use a heavier container as the plant grows.
- Crowded offsets: Offsets can make watering uneven when the pot becomes packed. Separate them only once they have roots.
- Mites and thrips: Spider mites and thrips can settle on undersides and new leaves, especially in warm dry indoor air.
Safety
Alocasia odora ‘California’ contains calcium oxalate crystals, so plant material can irritate the mouth, throat and stomach if ingested. Keep it out of reach of pets and children, and wash hands after pruning or dividing offsets.
A stable pot, bright light and steady moisture help this compact elephant-ear form grow broad green leaves.
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4.1 ★★★★★
Based on 8 reviews
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Product Reviews
★★★★★ 4
Powerful Family History
Format: Paperback
After the birth of her son, Thi Bui feels an increased sense of urgency about learning the stories of her own parents. Like all but her youngest sibling, she was born in Vietnam, though the children came of age in the United States. While the war itself haunts all of them, was the reason they left their homeland, the wounds her parents bear go far beyond the military conflict. This was only the second graphic novel I’ve ever read (both have been memoirs), and like the first was also selected by my book club. I feel like the limitations of the format mean it will always be a less preferred one for me, because I found myself wanting more words, more depth to the writing itself. But the story is deeply compelling, detailing her father’s brutal childhood, her mother’s much softer one, how they came together, and how the Vietnam War disrupted the future they thought they might have. It’s not as straightforward as “Americans bad”, and Bui is not afraid of the moral ambiguity of that time and place, where the best interests of the majority of the Vietnamese people was an open question for larger forces that seemed to have little room for consideration of what might have actually made regular lives easier to lead. And apart from the larger geopolitical machinations around them, the family had their own share of tragedy, including the death of their first child and a later stillbirth. But three living children and another on the way was enough for her parents to make frantic arrangements to leave, finally succeeding and eventually making their way to the United States. But of course, that was not the end of their story, just the beginning of a new chapter. Bui’s childhood as she depicts it makes it clear that it wasn’t the stuff dreams are made of, but what shines through is her tremendous empathy for her parents and how they became the people she experienced them as. Overarching the narrative is a meditation on parenthood, as it is the birth of her own child that inspires her to ask her parents more. They might have made major mistakes, but it is clear that they loved their children and did what they thought was best for them, making countless sacrifices to give them the best opportunities possible, even if that love was not always shown the way that they wanted and needed to feel it. Vietnamese perspectives on the war in their country were not something I was exposed to growing up (honestly the Vietnam War itself wasn’t something I remember being taught with particular rigor in high school apart from its connection to electoral politics), and I appreciated learning more about the history of the country and how the people who actually lived through the conflict thought about it. Even though this is not my preferred format, I think Bui uses it well to engage in some non-linear storytelling and to very literally illustrate what she’s trying to get it, like the way she parallels the way her relatively rural parents must have felt seeing Saigon for the first time with the way she felt when she first moved to New York, a sense of awe and possibility. It’s a powerful, moving work and I would recommend picking it up!
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Reviewed in the United States on February 3, 2026
★★★★★ 5
Truly, the best we could do
Format: Kindle
An excerpt from my analysis essay I submitted for my literature course: By revisiting her family’s past from before, during, and after the Vietnam War, she gained a deeper understanding of the emotional burdens her parents carried and the sacrifices they made that defined the entirety of their lives. Bui’s illustrated graphic memoir reveals that trauma does not simply disappear over time; instead, it becomes inherited, processed, and transformed. Through this process, Thi Bui is able to move toward empathy for her parents, acceptance of who they are, and a more complete sense of self.
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Reviewed in the United States on April 21, 2026
★★★★★ 5
Phenomenal. A must-read!
Format: Paperback
I first learned about this book only a week ago when visiting my sister for Thanksgiving in Eugene, Oregon. We went to the Jordan Schnitzer Museum of Art where I saw some work on display by the author, and there was a copy of her book available to look at, so I perused through and decided to buy it and read it. I'm so glad that I did! This is an incredible, poetic story that spans four generations, multiple wars and conflicts, and examines the fragility of the author's relationship with her parents and with her sense of place and motherhood. This book is one of the best I've read in a long time, and the art is moving and beautiful. It gave me new insight into the struggles of refugee life, and created a truly relatable narrative. I devoured this story in one Saturday. I highly recommend it.
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Reviewed in the United States on December 2, 2018
★★★★★ 5
A well composed memoir
Format: Paperback
Full review on nguyentoread.com
The Best We Could Do is Thi Bui's graphic memoir. Thi was born in Vietnam three months before the Vietnam War reached what we consider to be the end of the war. She came to America with her family in 1978. Bui's memoir spans multiple generations. In learning of her mother's and father's pasts, we learn the history of their parents. We see the struggles and pains of two people from very different walks of life trying to live during a time of war and chaos. We see glimpses of the agony everyone in the middle of the Vietnam War faced. Those who were not directly involved on either side but were caught in the middle of larger powers at war. This memoir more closely details the lives of her parents leading up to them arriving in America and making their life there. I was unsure if this memoir would focus largely on the experience of being a Vietnamese immigrant in America. There were parts that showed how it was for Bui's parents in a country where tensions were still high after the Vietnam War, where discrimination largely due to that was overt, and where degrees were not recognized and people who had spent their lives working and creating careers for themselves were not qualified for most work and had to hurdle multiple challenges to learn a language and complete education all over again if they wanted to provide a better life for their children. What Bui so beautifully captures in this memoir is the why behind how her parents were in raising her. Although Bui was born in Vietnam she was young when her family arrived in America. So I think her experience is one that many first generation Vietnamese-American people of my generation can understand and sympathize with. The wanting to know why their parents are the way they are but unable to ask because many have parents, like Bui's mother, who reluctantly share their stories and don't allow their children that glimpse that could help them better understand. In the panel which was most poignant to me, Bui draws her father as he looks over her work that would become The Best We Could Do. He says "You know how it was for me. And why later I wouldn't be... normal."
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Reviewed in the United States on May 20, 2019
★★★★★ 5
This book made me love my parents more
Format: Kindle
I loved the raw depictions of vietnamese history and human emotions. I recommend this book to anyone experiencing intergenerational trauma. 5 stars, this book helped me understand my father and mother just a little more, and that is priceless
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Reviewed in the United States on September 25, 2025