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Description
elephant ear plant leaves going yellow Maui Gold Elephant Ear – Plant DetectivesMaui Gold Elephant Ear (Colocasia esculenta 'Maui Gold') Maui Gold Elephant Ear is a bright tropical foliage plant valued for its chartreuse to golden yellow leaves, bold texture, and strong warm season growth. Its large heart shaped foliage brings a lighter, more colorful look to patios, poolside plantings, large containers, moist garden beds, and tropical style landscapes. This selection is especially useful for adding contrast against dark foliage,
Maui Gold Elephant Ear (Colocasia esculenta 'Maui Gold')
Maui Gold Elephant Ear is a bright tropical foliage plant valued for its chartreuse to golden yellow leaves, bold texture, and strong warm-season growth. Its large heart-shaped foliage brings a lighter, more colorful look to patios, poolside plantings, large containers, moist garden beds, and tropical-style landscapes. This selection is especially useful for adding contrast against dark foliage, deep green plantings, and brightly colored annuals. With warmth, rich soil, steady moisture, and sun to partial shade, Maui Gold Elephant Ear creates a lush, high-impact display in indoor and outdoor spaces.
Distinctive Features
Maui Gold Elephant Ear produces large chartreuse to golden yellow leaves that brighten the landscape and stand out from darker green or purple foliage plants. The foliage is typically broad, heart-shaped, and held on sturdy petioles, creating the bold texture associated with Colocasia. Color is often strongest in bright light when moisture is consistent, while afternoon shade can help protect the foliage in very hot locations. Flowers may appear occasionally as a spathe and spadix, but this plant is grown primarily for its colorful foliage, tropical texture, and warm-season presence.
Growing Conditions
- Sun: Grows best in full sun to partial shade, with afternoon shade helpful in very hot climates to protect the bright foliage from scorch.
- Soil: Prefers fertile, humusy, organically rich soil that stays consistently moist while still supporting healthy root growth.
- Water: Performs best with regular moisture during active growth and should not be allowed to dry out completely in warm weather.
- USDA Zones: Hardy outdoors in USDA Zones 8 to 11 in protected conditions, while colder climates should treat it as a seasonal container plant or overwinter the tubers indoors.
- Mature Size: Typically reaches about 3 to 5 feet tall and 3 to 5 feet wide in favorable outdoor conditions, while container-grown plants may stay smaller.
- Habit: Forms an upright to spreading clump with broad golden foliage rising from the base on sturdy petioles.
Ideal Uses
- Focal Point: Use as a bright foliage focal point in large containers, patios, poolside plantings, courtyard beds, tropical-style landscapes, or moist garden areas where its golden leaves can stand out.
- Container Planting: Grow in a large decorative pot where its chartreuse to gold foliage can provide strong color and be moved or protected before cold weather.
- Moist Garden: Plant in consistently moist beds, rain gardens, or pond-edge settings where its love of moisture can support strong growth.
- Tropical Garden: Pair with cannas, bananas, caladiums, gingers, coleus, and dark-leaved elephant ears to create a lush warm-season display.
- Mixed Border: Use in large mixed beds where its bright foliage can add contrast, texture, and tropical scale behind lower plants.
Low Maintenance Care
- Watering: Water regularly during active growth to keep the soil consistently moist, especially in containers and hot summer weather.
- Mulching: Apply mulch around outdoor plants to conserve moisture, moderate soil temperature, and reduce weed competition.
- Fertilizing: Feed during the active growing season with a balanced fertilizer to support large foliage and vigorous growth.
- Wind Protection: Site in a sheltered location because strong wind can tear or damage the large ornamental leaves.
- Overwintering: Lift and store tubers or move containers indoors before frost in climates where the plant is not reliably hardy.
- Leaf Cleanup: Remove yellowing, torn, or frost-damaged leaves as needed to keep the plant looking clean and encourage fresh growth.
Why Choose Maui Gold Elephant Ear?
- Golden Foliage: Displays large chartreuse to golden yellow leaves that brighten containers, patios, and tropical-style garden beds.
- Bold Texture: Produces broad heart-shaped foliage that brings tropical scale and lush structure to warm-season plantings.
- Color Contrast: Pairs beautifully with dark elephant ears, purple foliage, deep green plants, and brightly colored annuals.
- Fast Warm-Season Growth: Responds quickly to heat, water, and fertility with strong foliage production during the growing season.
- Container Friendly: Works well in large patio pots where it can be featured outdoors in summer and protected before frost.
Maui Gold Elephant Ear is an excellent choice for gardeners who want bold tropical foliage with a bright, sunny color effect. Its golden leaves, large clumping habit, moisture-loving growth, and strong seasonal presence make it a standout plant for containers, patios, moist garden beds, and dramatic warm-season landscape designs.
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4.1 ★★★★★
Based on 1937 reviews
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Product Reviews
★★★★★ 5
What is silence? Something of the sky in us.
Format: Paperback
Maybe the best poetry collection I've ever read. I rarely enjoy an entire collection. I usually like individual poems or even individual lines within a poem. Deaf Republic is a masterpiece. If I ever meet Ilya Kaminsky in real life, I might cry.
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Reviewed in the United States on July 23, 2023
★★★★★ 5
Worth the hype on NPR that led me here--I've found my new favorite book!
Format: Hardcover
As an Asian-American creative, I knew I'd love this when I first read a positive review for this online, and I was not disappointed once! The perspective is so unique--a Chinese girl in 1800s Georgia!--and the writing's mesmerizing. I wished this book could never end, and LOVED it for so many reasons:
The quick version:
-Have you ever read anything about Chinese-Americans living in the Reconstructionist South? Thought not. This book provides such a necessary historical lens into highly underrepresented people and untold stories--and does it with remarkable talent and grace. This alone is worth heavy consideration.
-Jo is a protagonist you can't help admiring - she's witty, a nonconformist by circumstance and by choice, and unafraid of getting back a little (or a lot) at people who've done her wrong.
-The narrative voice is unlike any I've ever seen before ("Mischief dangles from his smile") and there are great humorous moments.
-Great pun one-liners here and there - even Yours Truly, who admits to hating puns, likes how they're done here.
-A wonderful and dynamic supporting cast, including Jo's wry adoptive father, a socialite who reveals her cleverness with pepper, an enigmatic Southern Belle who becomes Jo's employer for the second time, and a stout-of-heart black boy that'll melt your cold dead heart. Also a very enthusiastic herding dog.
-A climax that honestly almost moved me to tears from the poignancy, but also the deep symbolism of how Jo's actions come to stand for so, so much more in those several pages.
-If you like to learn cool new words, you'll definitely learn a few by reading this.
-On a personal note, I was ecstatic to find references to Chinese knotting and barley tea, which I've grown up with, but never encountered in print before.
Stacey Lee isn't afraid to show how difficult it was to be Asian-American in post-Civil War Georgia: In the opening scene, Jo is fired from her job at a hat shop because of her ethnicity. Due to the Chinese Exclusion Act in effect at the time, Jo and her adoptive father are legally not US citizens and cannot even own land or rent; they're forced to live secretly as squatters in the basement of a family who prints a struggling local newspaper.
We also see realistic depictions of other social issues, like the initial implementation of segregation laws (which confuses Jo and her father, as they're neither black nor white), the erecting of Confederate statues, calls for women's suffrage (as well as the emergence of modern bicycles) treated with derision by many women who think the idea foolish, and white suffragists rejecting black women who support their ideals.
In all seriousness, get this book. If you have kids, get this for your kids. I rarely write book reviews, but I'm breaking the pattern because this novel is THAT good.
Come for the incredibly unique historical perspective that's surely the first of its kind ever published and shines a spotlight on sorely underwritten stories.
Stay for Jo's incredible strength, role model-ism, one-of-a-kind journey, and how her story reminds us all not just of the power of devastatingly clever puns, but the power that words give all of us in finding who we are and making the world a better place.
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Reviewed in the United States on September 25, 2019
★★★★★ 4
"Luck rides a horse named Joy"
Format: Kindle
What a delightful book! I was constantly rooting for the protagonist, Jo. She grew up without a true mother or father but found guidance and love with a Chinese man named Old Gin. They both found work with an aristocratic family as servants, while living secretly in the basement of a printing company. It was there that Jo learned to read and write through listening to the family who owned the printing press upstairs. She discovers the paper they publish, The Focus is in trouble and decides to help them out by secretly writing a column under the name Miss Sweetie. An adventure begins and secrets are revealed, but Jo emerges as a local hero as a result.
I loved the author's prose and they way she incorporated Chinese anecdotes. I laughed out loud and cried in equal measure.
It is a story about overcoming the struggle of race and poverty, but also about love and fighting for what you believe in. I highly recommend if your in the mood for something uplifting to read.
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Reviewed in the United States on May 14, 2021
★★★★★ 5
Excellent historical novel during the Gilded Age
Format: Hardcover
During the late 1800's Jo Kuan lives with her stand-in father, Old Gin, in a basement. She works as a milliner's assistant until she is let go one day because her employer deems that she is too opinionated and makes customers uncomfortable. However, there is one customer, Mrs. Bell, who admires Jo's craftmanship making intricate knots, which happens to be the lady who resides in the same residence as Jo. However, Mrs. Bell doesn't know Jo and Old Gin take refuge below the residence. Jo is given the opportunity to write as Miss Sweetie for the Focus's advice column when she sends an anonymous letter to the Bells. Miss Sweetie creates a huge buzz in her community. Jo anonymously writes articles regarding societal norms during the Gilded Age time period. What a great opportunity for someone who is "too opinionated." While she works as a lady's maid at the Paynes household during the day, she moonlights as Miss Sweetie at night.
Stacey Lee tells a wonderful and insightful story of what it means to be Asian in the South of the United States in the late 1800's. I am always delighted to read historical fiction with characters I can relate to. I often wonder how life was for Chinese-Americans in the past. There is hardly any information about the history of Chinese-Americans living in the United States and how life was for them. Lee is one of my favorite historical fiction novelists. Her characters are relatable and I love being transported to a different time period and a different location every time I pick up one of her books.
I absolutely love the voice of Jo. She is sassy but she knows her place. Jo is an advocate of women's rights and equality for all races. Being of Chinese descent, she teeters in between Whites and Blacks. It's hard to find a place in society, especially since there are not many Asian people living in the United States at the time. Most Chinese in the States at the time are men working on the railroad. Jo is longing to know more information regarding her parents. Who is her birth father? Who is her birth mother? Why was she given up? Jo is fortunate to have Old Gin raise her. The twist at the end caught me off guard for sure.
Although Jo may feel out of place, she has Old Gin as her family. I also enjoyed reading how Jo finds solace in Sweet Potato and she finds friendship with Noemi. Jo even has a complex relationship with Caroline Payne, who can be very cruel.
The Downstairs Girl shows readers a glimpse of the Gilded Age and what is it like to live as an Asian American during that time period. Jo defies the stereotype of Asian women being docile and quiet. Not only does she defy the stereotype for Asian women but she defies the gender stereotype of being a lady. Jo is quite capable of doing what a man does and she is quite outspoken. From writing in a newspaper to horse racing, Jo can do anything!
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Reviewed in the United States on September 11, 2019
★★★★★ 5
A story of someone who refuses to settle for less
Format: Hardcover
Stacey Lee takes you into a world you’re probably familiar with if you paid any attention in your U.S. History class and helps you see it in new ways. Most of us are familiar with the agonies of post reconstruction era South, but few stories shine a spotlight on the Chinese laborers who were shipped in by Southern plantation owners to replace emancipated slaves. This is the world seventeen-year-old Jo Kwan lives in. Much of Jo’s life is lived in secret. She can’t rent, let alone own, property, so she’s forced to live with her uncle in the basement of a white family who owns a failing newspaper. She can’t interact directly with the white patrons of the hat store because her boss says she makes the customers “uncomfortable.” She can’t even participate in the growing Suffrage movement because the women are only concerned with advancing the rights of white women.
What’s a strong, opinionated girl to do? Start an advice column.
She starts submitting columns to the paper under the pseudonym Miss Sweetie and immediately attracts attention, both good and bad, from Atlanta’s high society. Through the column, Jo finds her voice and an outlet to express views on her segregated and chauvinistic society. The more freedom she experiences, the more she wants and soon she is uncovering secrets of her past that threaten to ruin her.
The Downstairs Girl never lets the reader forget how crushing life was for Chinese and Black Americans during this time, but the book isn’t a downer. Mostly this is due to Jo Kwan being such a spirited and sympathetic character. Her story is one of someone who refuses to settle for less and it’s fun watching her get the best of some of her antagonists. Lee’s writing is also witty and engaging, filled with the kind of southern colloquialisms that help transport the reader to this time and place.
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Reviewed in the United States on December 4, 2019