A. dracontium sex life, hybrids

[Roy Herold]

Jim:

Just checked my Arisaema dracontiums, and here are the results. Out of five
plants in bloom, three are all female, one is half male and half female,
and one is mostly female with just a couple of rows of male flowers at the
top. Some of these are flowering for the first time, and never went through
the all male phase. In fact, the very first time I had an A. dracontium
seedling flower, it set seed-- and I think there was only one
inflorescence. Perhaps it was MF from the start. Just for reference, my
original seed came from a friend in Michigan.

I'm not sure if I mentioned this to the group before, but there is a very
interesting article on a colony of A. dracontium/stewardsonii hybrids that
was found in western Massachusetts. The evidence really sounds compelling,
and I'll post a couple of the illustrations on the A. Page soon. I was
going to try the same cross myself (usning stewardsonii pollen), but I just
looked at over a dozen stewardsonii's, and every single one was a female.
The dracontium pollen isn't ready yet, and the stews are fading fast....

In other arisaema hybrid news, I saw some neat plants while visiting
gardens a couple of weeks ago. In two of them (widely separated), there
were A. triphyllum x sikokianum hybrids.  The first ones had sikok type
leaves (five parted), and the inflorescence was green and white, with
little purple, and the spadix was kind of bulbous. The owner was upset that
the sikok seeds she had planted turned out this way. In the second garden,
the leaves were three parted, but much narrower that normal triphyllum. The
spathe was striped purple and white inside, with an erect hood, and the
spadix was dark and fairly large. Why don't these things happen to me?
Again, photos will be appearing on the A Page one of these days.

--Roy Herold
North Reading, MA
Home of man eating mosquitos