chinese arisaema

[Roy Herold]

>If you recieved seed from
>collection # 180 or #181 from our expedition, please change the label from
>A. candidissisum to A. franchetianum.  What a marvelous plant!

Gee, I must have told Tony at least six times when we were in China that
they were franchetianums, but he just wouldn't believe me. Actually, I
don't blame him at all for holding on to the hope that they were
candidissimums. I'm still hoping that one of the ones with big, round,
three-part leaves might be something other than franchetianum.

I'm happy to report that one of my own Chinese arisaemas is in bloom now,
and it's a dandy. We had gone a couple of weeks over there speculating that
some of the things we were seeing were A. lobatum, but they just didn't
have the same shape leaf as I had seen in Guy Gusman's photo (see the
Arisaema Page). We finally found an exact match at 99 Dragons-- one with
plain leaves, one with silver splashed leaves, both with turquoise blue
tubers (honest). The plain one was the larger, and had curious 'thumbs' at
the base of the outer two leaves-- are these the lobes of lobatum? I
brought back one tuber of each, plus seeds from the plain one (the seed
head looks remarkably like franchetianum, by the way). The splashed one is
in bloom now, flower before leaves, and is quite distinctive-- sort of a
pinky beige color, with darker stripes on the spathe. The leaves are worth
mentioning-- not only do they have the silver splashes, but there is a
distinct reddish orange edge to the leaves that looks like it was drawn on
with a pencil. It will be interesting to see if it holds as the leaf
matures. The second tuber is just coming up.

That's it for me-- I'll report on the rest of the goodies as they come up.

--Roy Herold
North Reading, MA