Arum.] ARACE/E. 527 



short obtuse and approximate or moderately diverging overlap- 

 ping at base, spadix clavate shorter than the erect including and 

 pointed spathe. Linn. Sp. PI. p. 1370. E. B. v. 19, tab. 1298. 

 Curt. Fl. Loud. i. fasc. 2, tab. 63. Br. Fl. p. 462. 



0. Leaves veined with greenish white.* 



In woods, thickets, groves and open pastures, on hedgebanks and the grassy 

 borders of fields ; most abundantly everywhere. M. April — June. Fr. July — 

 September. If. 



p. About Bonchurch and Steephill, not uncommonly. 



Our hedgebanks are profusely clothed with the broad leaves of the Arum in the 

 later spring and earlier summer months. 



From 6 to 8 inches high, quite glabrous. Root a roundish tuber the size of a 

 walnut. Leaves few, all radical, on long, roundish, sheathing footstalks, quite 

 entire, dark green, often blotched or spotted with purplish black, sometimes 

 veined with greenish white, mostly shining as if varnished beneath, fleshy and 

 succulent, but becoming membranaceous in drying, very various in size and form, 

 often 12 or 14 inches long, hastato-sagittate, commonly acute and much 

 longer than wide, frequently obtuse, rounded or nearly triangular, sometimes of 

 an ovate shape like those of Sorrel ; their lobes mostly short, blunt and but little 

 diverging, overlapping at their base, but not usually deflexed, greatly varying in 

 the degree df approximation, being sometimes nearly parallel, at other times 

 spreading considerably and more truly hastate, though never at right angles to 

 the petiole as in the closely allied A. italicum, by some (T think erroneously) con- 

 sidered a variety of our present species. Spathe a span long, erect, taper-pointed, 

 ribbed, pale greenish, often spotted or clouded with dull purple, contracted a lit- 

 tle above the base, where it forms a sac or cavity, containing the organs of repro- 

 duction, situated on the lower portion of the spadix, and which consist first of a 

 series of rough abortive germens, furnished with long variously twisted styles : 

 below these at a short interval is a broad zone of several rows of purple, sessile, 

 2-celled anthers; and, lastly, under both is a second set of ovaries, of which the 

 uppermost are still rough, abortive and furnished with styles, the lower and more 

 numerous whitish, smooth, with sessile deciduous stigmas, like a tuft of hairs, on 

 the summit of each ovary: that portion of the spadix not included in the con- 

 tracted part of the spathe is clavate, obtuse, naked and deciduous, in colour of 

 every shade between pale yellow-buff or dingy brown and bright purple, much 

 shorter than the inflated hood-like spathe, by which it is completely protected, 

 withering away with the latter after impregnation, together with the leaves : after 

 flowering, the inferior contracted portion of the spathe, which remains dry and 

 membranous when the superior cucullate part has wholly shrivelled up, performs 

 the functions and assumes the appearance of a capsule, closing over the unripe 

 fruit, which at length swell, and, bursting their filmy envelope, discover them- 

 selves in an oblong cluster of bright scarlet, roundish, sessile berries, very juicy 

 and acrimonious, each containing 2, 3, or 4 seeds (mostly 2 or 3), or by abortion 

 1 -seeded. Seeds brownish white, nearly globular, rugosely reticulate or areolate, 

 covered with a fine membrane. Albumen very white and farinaceous. 



The leaves of this singular plant are fully developed in the spring long before 

 the inflorescence, appearing above ground early in February, or in mild seasons 

 even sooner,f and withering away before Midsummer so completely that it would 

 be difiicult to trace their remains where they but lately grew in profusion. The 

 varieties with spotted and plain leaves are almost equally common with us, and 

 grow intermixed. Beichenbach, with his usual mania for "splitting," makes two 

 species of them, and observes, after giving the supposed characters of each, 



* [This plant is described by Mr. Albert Hambrough in the ' Phytologist' (vol. 

 V. p. 194) as Arum italicum. — Edrs.^ 



\ I have even remarked them springing up at the close of autumn at Bon- 

 chinch. 



