_Arisaema triphyllum_
_Flowers_--Minute, greenish yellow, clustered on the lower part of a
smooth, club-shaped, slender spadix within a green and maroon or
whitish-striped spathe that curves in a broad-pointed flap above it.
_Leaves:_ 3-foliate, usually overtopping the spathe, their slender
petioles 9 to 30 in. high, or as tall as the scape that rises from an
acrid corm. _Fruit:_ Smooth, shining red berries clustered on the
thickened club.
_Preferred Habitat_--Moist woodland and thickets.
_Flowering Season_--April-June.
_Distribution_--Nova Scotia westward to Minnesota, and southward to the
Gulf states.
A jolly-looking preacher is Jack, standing erect in his parti-colored
pulpit with a sounding-board over his head; but he is a gay deceiver, a
wolf in sheep’s clothing, literally a “brother to dragons,” an arrant
upstart, an ingrate, a murderer of innocent benefactors! “Female
botanizing classes pounce upon it as they would upon a pious young
clergyman,” complains Mr. Ellwanger. A poor relation of the stately
calla lily one knows Jack to be at a glance, her lovely white robe
corresponding to his striped pulpit, her bright yellow spadix to his
sleek reverence. In the damp woodlands where his pulpit is erected
beneath leafy cathedral arches, minute flies or gnats, recently emerged
from maggots in mushrooms, toadstools, or decaying logs, form the main
part of his congregation.
Now, to drop the clerical simile, let us peep within the sheathing
spathe, or, better still, strip it off altogether. Doctor Torrey states
that the dark-striped spathes are the fertile plants, those with green
and whitish lines, sterile. Within are smooth, glossy columns, and near
the base of each we shall find the true flowers, minute affairs, some
staminate; others, on distinct plants, pistillate, the berry bearers; or
rarely both male and female florets seated on the same club, as if
Jack’s elaborate plan to prevent self-fertilization were not yet
complete. Plants may be detected in process of evolution toward their
ideals just as nations and men are. Doubtless when Jack’s mechanism is
perfected, his guilt will disappear. A little way above the florets the
club enlarges abruptly, forming a projecting ledge that effectually
closes the avenue of escape for many a guileless victim. A fungous gnat,
enticed perhaps by the striped house of refuge from cold spring winds,
and with a prospect of food below, enters and slides down the inside
walls or the slippery, colored column: in either case descent is very
easy; it is the return that is made so difficult, if not impossible, for
the tiny visitors. Squeezing past the projecting ledge, the gnat finds
himself in a roomy apartment whose floor--the bottom of the pulpit--is
dusted over with fine pollen; that is, if he is among staminate flowers
already mature. To get some of that pollen, with which the gnat
presently covers himself, transferred to the minute pistillate florets
waiting for it in a distant chamber is, of course, Jack’s whole aim in
enticing visitors within his polished walls; but what means are provided
for their escape? Their efforts to crawl upward over the slippery
surface only land them weak and discouraged where they started. The
projecting ledge overhead prevents them from using their wings; the
passage between the ledge and the spathe is far too narrow to permit
flight. Now, if a gnat be persevering, he will presently discover a gap
in the flap where the spathe folds together in front, and through this
tiny opening he makes his escape, only to enter another pulpit, like the
trusted, but too trusting, messenger he is, and leave some of the
vitalizing pollen on the fertile florets awaiting his coming.
But suppose the fly, small as he is, is too large to work his way out
through the flap, or too bewildered or stupid to find the opening, or
too exhausted after his futile efforts to get out through the overhead
route to persevere, or too weak with hunger in case of long detention in
a pistillate trap where no pollen is, what then? Open a dozen of Jack’s
pulpits, and in several, at least, dead victims will be found--pathetic
little corpses sacrificed to the imperfection of his executive system.
Had the flies entered mature spathes, whose walls had spread outward and
away from the polished column, flight through the overhead route might
have been possible. However glad we may be to make every due allowance
for this sacrifice of the higher life to the lower, as only a temporary
imperfection of mechanism incidental to the plant’s higher development,
Jack’s present cruelty shocks us no less. Or, it may be, he will become
insectivorous like the pitcher plant in time. He comes from a rascally
family, anyhow. His cousin, the cuckoo-pint, as is well known, destroys
the winged messenger bearing its offspring to plant fresh colonies in a
distant bog, because the decayed body of the bird acts as the best
possible fertilizer into which the seedling may strike its roots.
In June and July the thick-set club, studded over with bright berries,
becomes conspicuous, to attract hungry woodland rovers in the hope that
the seeds will be dropped far from the parent plant. The Indians used to
boil the berries for food. The farinaceous root (corm) they likewise
boiled or dried to extract the stinging, blistering juice, leaving an
edible little “turnip,” however insipid and starchy.