I like to walk in the woods in search of interesting or rare plants. Recently I found a couple of such plants, and I will describe them in this post..

Here is the first one I found. The scientific name of this plant is (Arisaema triphyllum), and the strange looking hooded object in the center is, in fact, its flower. It obviously has an interesting structure quite unlike most familiar garden plants. This flower is only about 3 inches tall, even thought it looks much larger in this photo. Only one flower is produced per plant.

The two obvious parts of the flower are the outer tube which surrounds the lower part of the flower and then flares out to form the hood over the top part of the flower. In botany-speak this structure is called a “spathe”. The interior green rod is called the “spadix”.

This interesting conformation has led to one of the common names. It is “Jack-in-the-Pulpit”. The overlapping hood (spathe) is the pulpit, and the green spadix inside represents Jack giving a sermon.

“But,” you might ask, “does this thing reproduce by seeds? Where are the anthers to produce pollen and the pistils to be fertilized to produce seeds?”

This structure does have flowers of the more conventional type. They are many and tiny, all located deep inside on the base of the spadix and invisible in this view. Eventually the flowers will be pollinated (hopefully), and a small, bright red seed will be formed from each flower. One more interesting thing about this plant; each plant normally starts out producing only male flowers for the first few years of its life, but then changes to producing only female flowers in subsequent years, or producing both male and female flowers on the same plant, depending on environmental conditions.

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Here is a closer view to show Jack in his pulpit more clearly.

But I was after even more fascinating things on this hike. After crossing many a hill and dale, I found what I was seeking! And here it is in the photograph below.

This plant is the very rare “Gary-in-the Pulpit”. I caught tiny preacher Gary in his pulpit, no doubt having just finished an interesting and informative sermon to the small denizens of the forest.