A spike full of tiny, bright orange berries caught my eye some time ago when I was walking through a soggy area of our woods. Each time I went, I forgot to take my camera along, and this week all the orange berries had fallen off. Then we went for a hike in the Gatineau region of Quebec and I saw the same thing, but again, it didn’t get photographed. After looking online for more than an hour, I think I know what it is, although I’ll have to wait until next year’s foliage to verify it.
I think it is a green dragon (Arisaema dracontium), closely related to Jack-in-the-pulpit. Since I didn’t get any photos, I’m borrowing from various sites:
This photo is from Missouri’s Wildflowers. The berries we saw were more orange than this, but they were evenly spaced and regular as these are. The berry cluster was about 1 inch long as far as I recall, although I didn’t measure it, and it was standing straight up for both the plants we saw.
The green unripe berry cluster is exactly what we saw, except for the color. The only trouble with this ‘identification’ is that the foliage doesn’t seem to match what we saw, but I didn’t look very closely as the leaves were all droopy and lying on the ground under branches and other plants. This picture is from the Twin Swamps Nature Preserve website of Indiana.
This is the foliage we’ll be looking for next spring and summer (again from the Twin Swamps site):
A closely related species is Jack-in-the-pulpit but its berry cluster isn’t neat and regular like the ones we saw. This photo is from the Connecticut Botanical Society.
We have seen boggy plants elsewhere, but I never imagined there would be any close to home! I should have guessed, though, since the woods are often quite wet. Perhaps we even have lady’s slippers! We rarely go into the woods when they bloom because of the black flies and mosquitoes, but I’ll try to look for them next spring.
Green dragon (Arisaema dracontium), is our family’s first entry in the 100-Species Challenge.
Hello!!!! That lovely photo at the top of my blog was my view while sitting at a campground in Minnesota. Its the Mississippi River. We actually got to go to the headwaters of the Mississippi where you can step right on across the river!
Math. I love Apologia but I want my kids to excell in Chemistry. Its me who does not do well in math ( learning problem) and dear husband just does not have the time this year to assist in more than just regular math. So they will take the class through enrichment classes. they use Apologia there as well.
I love ambleside on line. Thanks for giving the author to book.
Love love love this species thing you are doing!!!! I may just jump on board once things settle out a bit. Have a lovely day!
Re yogurt, I have been using a candy thermometer and it works great. I hope it helps you get your yogurt under control.
I haven’t read the Robinson Crusoe sequel but I’ll have to do that!
The version of RC that I have was printed by Focus on the Family and it has all the great spiritual stuff in it. I appreciate the warning that some other versions have stripped the spiritual aspects — of course that won’t be a problem with RC since we have it, but I need to be careful about other “great books” that may have been altered in a PC way.
Neat photos. I live in Indiana, so I thought it was cool that you actually pulled some of your photos from a site in Indiana. 🙂
I do have a TWT tip for this week. Once I get to work, I’ll check back to see if yours is up, then link to it.