ARUM. 
larger version of A. assoana, but bigger and laxer in tuft, with the 
flower-heads on short stalks, horizontal or inclined to nod ; the inner 
base of the cup has no hairs or fluff; while in A. caucasica the leaves are 
feathered all along to the base on either side, in A. pedemontana they 
expand like a flattened hand, and are then cut into three fat lobes, 
which again are slashed into several more, those of the middle segment 
being fewest. From A. Genipz it differs chiefly in being finer of effect, 
with a laxer habit, and flower-heads gathered in a loose and interrupted 
spike, rather after the style of A. Mutellina. 
A. spicata recalls the picture of A. eriantha. But here the con- 
spicuous spike is a little stocky column, with each flower-head nestling 
by a long oval leaf standing out from the stem as in an Ajuga. The 
plant is smaller and tighter and a dense tuft, the spike dwarfer, the 
lower heads tending to have a foot-stalk, and the stem always without 
branches. The leaves at the base are on long foot-stalks too, divided 
into three segments and then re-gashed. They are smallish for their 
stems, and, like all the mass, are densely silvery, most pungently 
aromatic, and bitterly stimulating to the taste. If by nothing else 
this may be known from A. Mutellina by the many incised leaflets 
that sit stemless all the way up the stalk, fat, almost oblong, with 
only a gash or two at their base, instead of very finely slit, fewer, and 
on drawn-out foot-stalks ; also the inside base of the cup that holds the 
florets is quite smooth and without hairs. But indeed there is very 
little likeness between the two. 
A. splendens is a truly superb species from Argaeus and Caucasus, 
at 9000 to 10,000 feet. It makes a stout fat stock, from which it throws 
up many tufts of brilliantly silvery fine foliage cut into the most 
delicate and gleaming strips. And it must be noted that the out- 
side of the flower-heads is not woolly, as in nearly all the others 
except A. nitida. 
A. Steveniana is a silky-woolly Russian, and so are A. senjavinensis, 
Meyeriana, Triniana, and Lagopus. A. trifurcata and A. heterophylla 
come from Baikal, and have nodding flowers; while A. Villarsii is a 
European alpine species, near akin to A. pedemontana and A. eriantha. 
A. subspinescens is a variety of A. persica, and they both form 
almost spiny mounds of silver at very great heights on the Alps of 
Persia towards the snow-level (12,000 to 13,000 feet). 
Arthropodium cirrhatum is a New Zealander, for deep sheltered 
nooks and deep rich soil in warm climates. It forms masses of 
glossy lax strap-shaped leaves like Imantophyllum (which hates wind), 
and sends up multitudes of tall stems carrying showers of white stars. 
Arum.—No Arum is by any means indispensable to the rock- 
mye Uys 
