_Arum Family_
Smooth perennial herbs with tuberous or corn-like rootstocks and mostly
basal, large showy leaves; flowers small and numerously crowded on a
spadix which is generally surrounded or subtended by a simple showy
leaf-like organ called a spathe.
A very numerous family found mostly in the tropics and represented in
our region by but a single species.
[Sidenote: =Lysichiton kamtschatcense= (L.) Schott. _Western Skunk
Cabbage._]
A stemless marsh plant with large leaves 1—4 feet long, 3—18 inches
wide, oblong or oblong-lanceolate, acute, narrowed below into a short
petiole. Flowers appearing before the leaves; spathe yellow with a
broad acute blade 2—6 inches long, narrowed below to a sheathing
petiole 3—10 inches long; spadix 2—4 inches long, densely flowered, on
a stout peduncle 8 inches or more long.
In wet and marshy spots through the Selkirks. Very abundant near Bear
Creek Station on the railway, flowering in early spring.