294 , Wake Robin. 



the netted veining of Exogens, because on Arum the veins are 

 branched rather than netted, and are in a great measure desti- 

 tute of the lateral, minute branchlets to which the peculiar ap- 

 pearance of Exogenous leaves is chiefly owing. Many of 

 these have large, tuberous, under-ground stems, which, al- 

 though acrid and even poisonous when raw, nevertheless, by 

 slicing, washing and cooking, become fit for food, and are ac- 

 tually so employed, in England only in a few places or in times 

 of scarcity, but in tropical countries as a common every-day 

 esculent vegetable. Their foliage is generally more or less 

 lobed, and sometimes very curiously ; but is so much diversi- 

 fied that it can hardly be said to offer any certain mark of 

 recognition. The great and striking feature of the natural 

 order resides in the spathe, which we have before explained 

 to be a leaf usually colored, but sometimes green, which is 

 rolled up round a spike of flowers ; in fact a sort of large 

 bract; and the spadix, which is a fleshy spike, covered all over 

 with flowers, and enclosed in a spathe. In all Araceous plants 

 the flowers are collected upon a spadix and are enclosed in a 

 spathe. The spathe, for example, is more than a foot some- 

 time in diameter, forming a huge vegetable bell, of which the 

 spadix would be the clapper if the spathe were not erect. It 

 is often stained with the deepest and richest colors ; and in 

 some cases it is extended on one side into a long slender tail, 

 very much like that of the calyx in the long tailed Birthwort. 

 The spadix on the other hand is either covered all over witli 

 flowers, in which case it makes no unusual appearance, or it 

 is naked at the point, and then assumes the strangest shapes, 

 which sometimes moreover glow with all the colors of the 

 spathe. Thus in the Dragon Arum it is a long purple horn, 

 standing up and projecting from a large deep-purple spathe ; in 

 others it hangs down from the spathe, like a slender tail ; and 

 in some cases it is enlarged into a disgusting fungus, like livid 



excrescence. The Common spotted Arum, Wake Robin 



Arum Maculatum, gives a sufficiently correct idea of the 

 structure of this tube. It has a smooth, erect, oblong spathe, 

 green outside, whitish inside, and unrolling to unclose the point 

 of the spadix, which children call the Lady riding in her 

 coach. If the spadix is extracted, a long, soft, fleshy branch 



