Spotted arum

Family Araceae. Grows wild in the shady forests of Central Europe, the Balkans, Ukraine, Moldova, and the Caucasus, on moist soil.

It is attractive because of the distinctive shape of its reddish-green, greenish or brown spathe and its red fruits. Plant height 15 - 25 cm (according to some sources up to 60), blooms from late May to mid-June. Leaves arrowhead-lanceolate, often with red spots, long-petioled. Flowering stem is almost equal in length to the leaf petiole. The spathe is lanceolate, greenish inside, brownish outside, purple with dark spots along the edges; its tube is three times shorter than the blade. The spadix is half as long as the spathe; its appendage is purple, on a thin pale-yellow stalk. Flowers are unisexual. In August the leaves die back, revealing an elongated upward fruit stalk with numerous berries. Berries are red. In September the fruits fall, and in spring of the following year self-seeding appears. Cold-hardy. Tuber oval or cylindrical. Tubers are poisonous when raw, edible when boiled or roasted.