Lords-and-Ladies

Wordsworth wrote:

What we need is not the will to believe, but the wish to find out.

That seems a good note to start upon.

Lords-and-Ladies or Cuckoo-pint or Jack-in-the-pulpit has very many local names, bringing home the usefulness of the Latin: Arum maculatum. There are only two Arum species found in the UK: Arum maculatum and Arum italicum which is native locally on the South Coast. Arum italicum is much more widespread as a garden escapee.

Richard Mabey in Flora Britannica writes " the plant itself is a handsome and modest one, pale and sculptural in the spring." I won't argue with that.

There is a massive amount of literature about this plant: botanical, herbal, historical, and of course the folklore. Many of the English names as usual refer to the shape and also here the similarity to a phallus: Dog cocks, Cuckoo-pint (pronounced as in pin not pint) and referring to Old English pintel (penis), Priest's pintle and the more polite Lords-and-Ladies. Names also refer to the poisonous qualities of the plant: Poison-root and Poison-fingers. 

It was known as Long purples in Warwickshire and perhaps Shakespeare knew well what he was hinting in the lines that describe Ophelia's garland in Hamlet. 

There with fantastic garlands did she come,

Of crow-flowers, nettles, daisies and long purples

That liberal shepherds give a grosser name, 

But our cold maids do dead men's fingers call them. 

These Long purples may be Early-purple Orchid, Orchis mascula (another story there) but as Arum maculatum is known as Dead Man's Fingers in Worcestershire I think there is room for doubt. Of course, if Shakespeare had used the Latin names we wouldn't be in any doubt!

One of the hundred plus folk names is Starchwort. Gerard records that a pure and white starch is made from the roots of Cuckoo-pint. It was used for stiffening Elizabethan ruffs but as it was acrid it was very damaging to the hands of those doing the starching.

Richard Mabey reports from E. M Porter's book Cambridgeshire Customs and Folklore (1969) that the pollen of this flower throws off a faint light at dusk and when Irish labourers came to the Fens to find work they named the plant Fairy Lamps. Fen lightermen had long called them Shiners. (Memo to self: go and have a look!)

The botanical structure is fascinating and grows more at every turn. Below is my first sight of an opened spathe this year. The large, pale green hood surrounds the upright, pencil-like spadix which is between 10-25 cm tall. The spathe overlaps about 30% at the base which is one of the pollination devices, protecting the flowers and providing an insect trap: read on for details.

The photo below is a macro shot of the same plant in a Monmouthshire hedgerow.  Stage 1 of pollination happens when the ring of thread-like sterile male flowers traps midges attracted to the putrid smell produced by the female flowers. This smell is caused by the spadix generating its own heat -pretty rare in a plant- and vaporising amine molecules. This is the first phase, as I understand it, Day 1. Trapped inside the base until the male flowers mature these flies become covered in pollen. Little more can be seen externally at this time. Maturation of the male flowers takes about a day, then the spathe withers, drops off and the flies covered in pollen are released and proceed to another Arum maculatum to pollinate again. The plants cannot self- pollinate.

In my garden I found a plant that was at least approaching phase 2, probably on Day 2. The spathe had withered and I pulled it back to expose the small red spherules which are the male flowers and the cream globules that are the female ones. Some of the female flowers have hairs coming from them. A tiny slug remained but I think the midges had gone. The female flowers mature into the orange berries seen in the Autumn which are the most poisonous part of the plant. 

Leaves might seem an anticlimax after all that but they have their own backstory of normal black spots due to a genetic factor and occurring on only some of Arum maculatum plants. I found these within a couple of metres of each other on the shady side of a hedgerow. One spotted, one not. And to further complicate the issue there are black spots caused by a Basidomycotal smut fungus..... Lots more info on the Wildflowerfinder website, link below.

Pythagoras said: "Leave the road, take the trails." I hope you have found this trail round the hedgerows and woods of Monmouthshire interesting.

Acknowledgements

Richard Mabey Flora Britannica

Harrap's Wildflowers

Clive Stace The New Flora of the British Isles 4 

Grigson The Englishman's Flora

Websites included 

https://bardgarden.blogspot.com/2015/01/ophelias-flowers.html

http://elsinore.ucsc.edu/women/longPurples.html

http://wildflowerfinder.org.uk/Flowers/L/LordsAndLadies/LordsAndLadies.htm

https://botanical.com/botanical/mgmh/c/cucko122.html