Arisaema hardiness

[Ellen Hornig]

Obviously, the hardiness question interests us all.  The problem, to me,
is how we sort out all the possible variables.  If you really wanted to
test hardiness properly, you'd have to control for soil type, drainage,
depth, duration of highs and lows, frequency and magnitude of temperature
changes, rainfall (patterns as well as totals), snowcover (ditto), and any
number of other things.  To get halfway meaningful results, you'd have to
include several tubers in each treatment sample.  Even I, the Queen of
the Candidissimums :-), don't have enough tubers to fund that research -
and that's only one species.

Without a scientific approach, though, I still find anecdotal evidence
useful, and hope people will keep reporting on that basis.  I will offer to
do my part next year (if someone reminds me) by at least subjecting a few
candidissimums and franchetianums to controlled freezing experiments (i.e.
in the freezer).  It seems pointless to do this now, when their
metabolisms are probably switching into spring gear (or so I like to
imagine).

Ellen