THE ARUMS 327 



J. virginiana, Linn. Red cedar. Savin. Small tree or large shrub, 

 usually narrow pyramidal in growth, with leaves of two kinds (scale-like 

 and awl -like, the former small and lying close to the branch): berry glaucous: 

 heart-wood red and highly scented. Common on banks and in old fields. 



BB. ANGIOSPERMS: C. MONOCOTYLEDONS. 

 III. ARACE^E. ARUM FAMILY. 



Perennial herbs, with rhizomes or corm-like tubers and acrid juice: 

 flowers minute, often diclinous and naked, borne on a spadix and 

 surrounded or attended by a spathe: fruit usually a berry, the entire 

 spadix usually enlarging and bearing the coherent berries in a large 

 head or spike. Leaves often netted-veined. Mostly tropical plants, 

 and some of temperate regions, many of them odd and grotesque. 

 Genera about 100; species about 1,000. Representative plants are 

 skunk cabbage, jack-in-the-pulpit, calla, caladium, anthurium. 



A. Leaves compound 1. Arisaema 



AA. Leaves simple. 



B. Spathe hooded or roofed at the top 2. Symplocarpus 



BB. Spathe open or spreading at the top 3. Richardia 



BBB. Spathe open and spreading for its whole length 4. Calla 



BBBB. Spathe separated from spadix, appearing lateral. . . .5. Acorus 



1. ARISAEMA. INDIAN TURNIP. JACK-IN-THE-PULPIT. 



Stem arising from a corm-like tuber, and bearing 1 or 2 compound leaves 

 with sheathing petioles: flowers naked and diclinous, the pistillate at the 

 base of the spadix and the staminate above them (or the plant dioecious), 

 the top of the spadix not flo wer- bearing : staminate flowers of a few sessile 

 anthers, and the pistillate with 1 sessile ovary, which ripens into a red few- 

 seeded berry. Plants of spring or early summer, in rich woods. Tuber 

 very pungent, often used in domestic medicine. 



A. triphyllum, Schott. Jack-in-the-pulpit. Common Indian turnip. 

 Fig. 251.' Leaves usually 2, each bearing 3 oblong elliptic pointed leaflets: 

 spathe purple-striped, curving over the spadix. 



A. Dracontium, Schott. Dragon-root. Leaf usually 1, with 7-11 narrow 

 oblong leaflets: spathe greenish, shorter than the spadix. 



2. SYMPLOCARPUS. SKUNK CABBAGE. 



Leaves and flowers arising from a strong rootstock, the Ivs. very large 

 and appearing after the spathes: fls. perfect, each with 4 sepals, 4 stamens 

 and single ovary which is sunk in the fleshy spadix : fruit made up of the 

 fleshy spadix with imbedded fleshy seeds: spathe pointed and arching, in- 

 closing the spadix. Common in wet meadows in the northeastern states. 



