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From commentor Wesley:
I live in downtown Washington DC (Dupont Circle) and have come across this plant attached in a planter across from my apartment. I’ve seen it growing for the last several years but always forget to get a pic of it. I’ve no idea what the hell it is but it is a really alien and cool looking plant. I haven’t seen anything this odd outside of the flower markets in the Netherlands. The attached pics are from when it seems to be young. The green “berries” or “nodes” (body snatcher pods) will eventually turn dark red/purple mid-summer (if it doesn’t get trampled during the upcoming DC Pride Parade). Note the lack of leaves, so I’m guessing it is a bulb/rhizome sort of plant and it seems to come up in the same spot each year. I’ve asked several friends that are more in the scientific/botany realm and they have no clue. I’ve no idea what they look like when they first start coming up out of the ground as I only notice them when they hit the 8”-1’ height. I’m hoping someone could tell me what it is so I can start researching it for next year. Whatever the hell it is, it is cool as hell as long as it doesn’t creep across the street while I sleep and replace me with a human headed dog!
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Apart from possibly alien invaders, what’s going on in everyone’s garden this week?
piratedan
I have it on good authority that those are the pods (Brodercus Occupodus Ad Nauseum) that are used to make innocent journalists part of the village…. your life is in danger, take extreme precautions from this point forward, TRUST NO ONE BECAUSE BOTH SIDES DO IT!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
blahblah
Could be ginseng, it does share the distinct flower. Hard to tell without pictures of the foliage.
Sly
It’s definitely of the Arum genus, probably Arum Italicum.
Don’t eat it.
Uncle Glenny
Looks like jack in the pulpit. We used to have a lot of them where I lived in NJ long ago. Do a google image search and compare.
greenergood
It’s jack-in-the-pulpit, Ariseama triphyllum, or it’s closely related to it. Pretty but poisonous, sort of, if consumed raw.
henqiguai
Bunch of darned horticulturalists hanging out in this joint.
In your place, were I really interested, I’d contact the UM Extension Service; they exist for this stuff. Or try the Arboretum.
Maude
@Sly:
That’s it.
Jack in the pulpit doesn’t have those berries.
Raven
Not much rain here although we did get a fairly decent shower once during the week. The memorial service for my friend at his “farm” was incredible. He and his family inherited this property from a woman they helped as she died from cancer years ago. His goal was to restore to as much of a natural state as possible. Here’s a link to the SEEDS webpage for his school.
Raven
More info on the farm.
Horrendo Slapp (formerly Jimperson Zibb, Duncan Dönitz, Otto Graf von Pfmidtnöchtler-Pízsmőgy, Mumphrey, et al.)
I, too, would have thought it was a jack-in-the-pulpit, only what’s shown here is what’s left after all the leaves fall off later in the summer. So I don’t know what it is, but that guess of Arum whatever sounds good, I guess. I still would have thought it was some kind of mutant, early shedding jack-in-the-pulpit…
Dr Deb
It is definitely Arum italicum and, like Sly says, the berries and leaves are poisonous. I live in the UK and grow it in my garden. It is a great winter plant because it is in leaf when lots of other plants are dormant. Then, in the spring/early summer, it puts up the berry stalk you see. The only downside to growing it is that it can be invasive. So, I plant mine where they can’t do too much spreading.
Svensker
Here’s a jack-in-the-pulpit showing the fruits when they’re green — looks a lot like Wesley’s plant, although his also looks a lot like the Arum.
I never knew that jacks had those funny seed/berries/fruit thingies.
Since it doesn’t have leaves now, seems more like a jack than an arum, which fruits with the showy leaves. Hmmmm.
blahblah
It’s not ginseng by the way. The structure looks a lot like fruiting ginseng but the flowers are way different.
Mods are just slow as fuck after I requested deletion.
It does look more like an Arum, but it would be nice to see some foliage.
Fester Addams
What do you know, it is an alien invader:
http://www.cleanwaterservices.org/Residents/JoinTheCycle/InYourYard/Invasives/ItalianLordsandLadies.aspx
Hillary Rettig
Feed me, Seymour!
http://youtu.be/dGlagb9hwM0
SiubhanDuinne
@Raven: @Raven:
That sounds like a great program, and it sounds as though your friend was a wonderful man whose impact will be felt for generations. I loved the message you posted the other night from his daughter about getting to experience photosynthesis firsthand (paraphrasing). RIP.
Riilism
Looks like Jacks with the remnant of the flower draped over the seed berries….
Svensker
@Fester Addams:
So it leafs out in the spring, flowers, then the leaves fade away…like now, no leaves, fruits only..then gets new leaves in the fall.
I’m going with arum.
Svensker
@Riilism:
Bread and butter!
Just Some Fuckhead
Gotta get my garden in today. Went with corn, tomatoes, lettuce, green peppers, crookneck squash, cucumbers and watermelon.
Took the day off yesterday and went fishing at the Bay Bridge Tunnel and then drove up on the Eastern Shore and had dinner at Sting Rays.
RAVEN
@Just Some Fuckhead: Catch anything?
Just Some Fuckhead
@RAVEN: Not much, some small croaker, a few crabs and a skate.
Rosalita
Gotta love the BJ hive-mind. Plant mystery solved in three comments.
As a condo dweller with a small plot (flowers only, 24″ limit thank you) I plan to go out and trim up a bit and add some summer annuals for color. I’m thinking Cosmos (fuck the 24″ limit thank you).
RoonieRoo
Being June in a Texas garden, the cukes, sweet potatoes, tomatoes and butternut are all starting to duke it out over space. We’re just starting to enter “jungle mode”. In another couple of weeks it will be questionable if I can get down the aisles without being grabbed by half a dozen tendrils.
MattF
Oh, boy. Trip down memory lane with the techno-sounds of 20 years ago:
http://savethesounds.info/
The upper right hand box is the modem-connection sequence, which Dave Barry described as “the sound of a duck swallowing a kazoo.”
Scout211
Harvesting blueberries now. Very tasty.
Rhubarb is plentiful and I picked peaches from my early peach tree yesterday and also, too, apricots. Today I will make pie filling (rhubarb pie, peach pie, apricot pie) and bag them in ziplocs for freezing.
The birds ate ALL of my cherries. ALL of them. My fault, though, as I was too late with the bird netting this year. Lazy me.
Punchy
Lets ask Sully.
Teresa
I do enjoy reading about all your plant workings.
I have very good dirt. I can plant nearly anything it will grow like gang busters. The only time it dies is when I touch it. lol
JoyfulA
I’m back from the hospital, with a new knee and a knee-bending machine that does all the exercising for me.
That’s my fourth artificial joint, and driving within a mile of an airport sets off the sirens.
jeffreyw
Pics of our patio container garden. Just harvested my first jalapeno this morning.
Schlemizel
I am grateful that the weather has been great this weekend – its the first weekend I have not been forced into garden duty because the weather was too crappy to do much else.
Put 48 miles on the bike yesterday, which it turns out was way too much for the first time in the saddle since the cancer thing. I’ll probably spend the day hobbling around like an 80 year old. Though there is a cheese exhibition at the fair grounds I want to go to.
p.a.
planted 3 different types of mint in the deadzone strip of woodlot i try to keep clear of asian bittersweet so it and associated wild flora won’t overgrow and take down my fence as it has my neighbor’s. if i planted the mint on my property it would, of course, take over and crowd out everything else by fall. now that that is what i want it to do, of course it will not.
RalfW
ETA: wrong thread
WereBear
@Rosalita: Cosmos is worth breaking the law.
As an apartment dweller, I grow kittens. Our little foundling is now 21 months old; and yet still manages Feats of Cute.
Tristan says don’t go!
He is the most affectionate little fellow.
RubberCrutch
It’s definitely Jack In The Pulpit, what you might call a native woodland springtime ephemeral. I planted two in the yard here in central Illinois this year. The photo shows the fruit after the plant has flowered and the leaves have begun to drop.
Mnemosyne
@jeffreyw:
I’m not sure that’s really your garden. There are no cats in it.
J R in WV
The original was hazy about what time of year these berries appear.
We have wild Jack-in-the-pulpit all around, and in the summer they have berries very much like this.
We also have Arum in several places around outside the house, it does spread, but very slowly, so I would call it minimally invasive. It also has berries much like the clump shown at the appropriate time in its seasonal cycle, later in the year than Jack’s do.
The foliage is quite different between the Jack’s with two large leaves and the peculiar bloom, being a slender cup with one edge coming to a point over the bloom and with a small torpedo shaped rounded dome of a tower in the center of the bloom.
On our WV farm, the Arum has prolific arrowhead shaped leaves of a dark green with lighter white veins, which come up in the fall after the fruiting body’s seeds have turned bright red (in our case, as opposed to purple described in the original post) and been eaten by birds or rolled down the hill to go to seed new plants.
The Arum stays bright green all winter, which the helleboros we have planted does as well. We also have moss and native ferns which stay green all winter, but those are more likely to be covered by snow if we have an old-fashioned winter, as opposed to the fall-like mud seasons we’ve been having.
I’ll have to look for the flower in the Arum, it may be as interesting as the Jack’s flower, down under all that pretty foliage.
SiubhanDuinne
As this is an open thread, I just want to lament the death of Richard Dawson. I’ve never been much of a TV game show fan, and have detested the later incarnations of “Family Feud” — but the original version, because of him, was a lot of fun to watch.
“Survey says . . . R.I.P.”
mazareth
I finally got my tomatoes in the ground yesterday. I’ll put my peppers this evening once the sun is down a little. I should also plan out the adjoining bed and get my bean trellises put up. I’m growing the following varieties: Black Krim, Rose de Berne, Moskvich, Red Pear (cherry tomato) and San Marzano. The first 3 were by far the best producers in my garden last year. I would put Rose de Berne about even with Brandywine for taste, but it’s a lot more productive.
It’s 72F and mostly sunny. Going to finish my tea and take a bike ride.
Mnemosyne
Our almost six-year-old niece called us on G’s cell phone to wish him a happy birthday. She hasn’t quite figured out the whole “talk into the phone” part of calling people on the phone, but it was adorable anyway.
Ken
What you have there is a triffid. In early summer, you want to condition the soil – I recommend a mix of equal parts vermiculite, well-rotted cow manure, and human blood – and then mulch heavily around the central stem. Water regularly but not heavily. When the prehensile stalk begins to develop, keep pinching it back until late September. You should get a good showing in late autumn.
MazeDancer
Props to all Jack-in-the-Pulpit posters. Here are pictures of some from Garden Web that look just like the shots above:
http://forums.gardenweb.com/forums/load/cangard/msg0915500417152.html
jeffreyw
@Mnemosyne:
We try to keep them out of the pots, and usually succeed.
wesley
Thanks for the help everyone. At least I know have an idea what to look for. I’m leaning more towards the Jack-in-the -pulpit or Italian Lords-and-Ladies after doing some googling. The Italian Lords-and-Ladies looks exactly right, but I don’t recall seeing leaves such as that unless they dye off before the spikes appear. I’ll have to pay attention to the area next year earlier. As I said I don’t even notice the plants till the spikes and berries appear.
Beth in VA
I knew this was jack-in-the-pulpit immediately. And it’s the right time of year for their fruits, at least this year–everything bloomed early.
Bob in Pensacola
July seems to have arrived a month early, here in north Florida, and I’m just trying to keep stuff from wilting while staying cool. Most daffodil leaves have turned brown and have been mowed. I pulled some tired tomato plants yesterday, though I still have some volunteer Wild Everglades tomatoes. (The plants do better than standard varieties in the Florida heat, but the fruits are small and don’t taste very good. I wonder if they’d make good grafting stock.) Annual and perennial sunflowers are flowering. Some wild-looking single marigolds from seed are doing well. I may have Rudbeckias (fulgida and lanciniata) and some asters (unknown variety) this year as I’ve managed to keep the rabbits off them so far. A milkweed plant stripped of foliage by Monarch caterpillars a month or so ago has leafed out and is blooming again. Some clear yellow African Daisies I babied through the winter are still looking good. More honey bees this year than I’ve seen in a while. Getting pushed around some by the bumblebees (both the honeybees and me), which seem to have increased in number around here in recent years. Hurricane season is here.