[Reprinted from Journ.vl OF the New York Botanical Garden, May, 1912.J 



WILD PLANTS NEEDING PROTECTION.^ 

 I. "Jack in the Pulpit" (Arisaema triphyllum (L.) Torr.) 



(With Plate XCIII.) 



When the trees are unfolding their fresh green leaves in May 

 and June, and the violets and spring-beauties are in bloom, Jack- 

 in-the-pulpit may be found in moist woodlands and on shady 

 banks, where the earth is soft and loamy. It is a perennial herb, 

 and if left undisturbed, it sometimes lives many years and attains a 

 height of three feet, with a subterranean corm as large as an apple. 

 This corm has given to the plant the name of "Indian turnip" 

 though it is not edible, when raw, for it has an acrid taste, 

 irritating to the tongue, on account of the acicular crystals of 

 calcium oxalate which it contains, known as raphides. It propa- 

 gates by forming smaller secondary corms around the older ones 

 and in this way new plants are started. It often bears no fruit 

 in the vicinity of New York, not only on account of the depreda- 

 tions of children, but because it is dioecious and the proper insect 

 visitors, on which it is dependent for pollination, seem to be 

 lacking. Usually the leaves turn yellow and the plant disappears 

 in June and July, though this varies in dififereni: porrions of its 

 range, which extends throughout the Eastern and Central states, 

 as far north as Nova Scotia and Ontario and south to Florida 

 and Louisiana. It bears what would appear to most children 

 to be a single large flower, but is really a cluster of small simple 

 flowers, borne at the base of a fleshy club-shaped spadix, which 

 is enclosed by the convolute base of the spathe, the summit of 



• Illustrated by the aid of the Stokes Fund for the Preservation of Native Plants. 



