96 THE FRUITS OF THE COUNTRY-SIDE 



CUCKOO'PINT (Arum Maculatum) 



Our fourteenth illustration depicts the brilliant berries 

 of the Cuckoo-Pint, or wild Arum, the Arum maculatum. 

 This plant, common enough almost everywhere in damp 

 and shady hedgerows or under the shade of the trees in 

 the copse, is curious in the way it presents itself to us 

 under such an entirely different guise at different times 

 of the year. In the Spring we see its quaint inflorescence 

 rising from the .midst of its mass of foliage, then that all 

 passes out of sight and is forgotten, and presently when 

 the Autumn days come we see the scarlet spikes, such we 

 have figured, rising amidst the low vegetation in their naked 

 simplicity, the leaves, like the flowers, having disappeared 

 months ago. 



The leaves are bright and shining, as though highly 

 glazed or varnished, and are of arrow-head shape. They 

 are of a deep green colour, blotched over with purple spots 

 of various sizes. They are so acrid that they inflame and 

 irritate the skin, and may even raise blisters. Bulliard, in 

 his Histoire des Plantes Fenemeuses, instances the case of 

 three children who ate some of these berries. They were 

 seized with horrible convulsions, their throats becoming 

 so swollen that they were unable to swallow anything ; 

 two of them quickly died, while the third was saved with 

 great difficulty. 



The flowers are very peculiar in structure, a central club- 

 like body bearing on its lower portion a ring of pistillate 

 flowers, and above these the staminiferous ones, the whole 

 being surrounded by a large leafy sheath. The flowering 

 season is April and May. In the Autumn, as we have 



