ARUM FAMILY 



sometimes on different plants, but when on the same 

 plant the sterile, that is, the stamens which bear the 

 pollen, are grouped toward the top of the club. They 

 seem to be mere projections almost white in color, bear- 

 ing four purplish, cup-like anthers filled with white pol- 

 len. Below them are the pistillate blossoms gathered 

 around the base of the club, and these are tiny, round, 

 greenish bodies, packed close, and each with a purple 

 stigma. 



As time passes, the pollen is scattered. The waving 

 hood disappears, the round, green bodies enlarge, and 

 finally in September one comes upon a ball of briUiant 

 scarlet berries, borne at the summit of a stiff, drying 

 stem, the contribution of Jack to the w^orld. However, 

 at the base of this drying stem, whose work is done, Hes, 

 deep in the soil, the corm, where the food is stored which 

 shall send up another Jack in the coming spring. There 

 is a tradition that this solid corm w^as used as food by 

 the Indians, which gave the plant the name of Indian- 

 Turnip. It must have been a hot morsel, if not a dan- 

 gerous one, though it is said that the character of the 

 turnip is softened somewhat by boiling, but it could 

 never be very appetizing. This plant has two anchors 

 to windward, a corm, and a ball of seeds, so that the 

 race may continue in the land. 



The English Jack is called Cuckoo-Pint and is the 

 flower Jean Ingelow means in her Songs of Seven: 



"O Cuckoo-Pint, toll me the purple clapper, 

 That hangs in your clear green bell." 



The varying color of the spathes are by some authori- 

 ties supposed to indicate differences in the flowers, the 

 dark spathes indicating pistillate and the light ones 



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