Tuesday, April 27, 2010

Help Me Identify This Plant!

Hey ya'll! You are so good at helping me identify plants & trees I don't know, I thought I'd ask my special detective readers to help me out again!

This time we have this totally Nightmare Before Christmas, dark and striking striped flower in a deep brown, purple, maroon type color contrasted by the more icy yellow green lines.
It's leaves are hanging down (may be because spring is still in it's early chilly stages here) - but each flower comes from a thick watery stem (resembling the stem of a blood root) and one set of the three leaves on a separate stem.
Pictured below, it is growing underneath a large violet colored trillium. These striped beauties are growing in a group together, in a shady area. I have this vague memory from back 7 years ago when I lived in Bethel, NC that a woman who loved native plants showed me one of these and called it Jack In The Pulpit?

Ya'll tell me what it is.... :)
xoxoxo

5 comments:

Liberty said...

you got it! jack in the pulpit :-)
I just got back from a walk in the forest and saw some of these here too... along with trilliums, trout lily and may apple - they all tend to grow in similar areas.
jack in the pulpits are pretty neat looking plants. I used to get them confused with pitcher plants which are carnivorous.
great photos Leslie :-)

Gratuitous said...

I love how similar it looks to the pitcher plant. I had to find out what was up with its shape, and I still don't know why it's tubular and has that umbrella, but I did learn that it's pollinated by flies, attracted by heat and smell. And it's pretty toxic, but I'm wondering about Wikipedia's statement: "...Care should also be taken to avoid confusion with poison ivy, which has 3 leaflets somewhat similar in appearance." Why, because poison ivy makes such good eatin'?

Miss Voodoo said...

Hey Liberty!

You like (and have) all the same plants we do ... (except i am not sure about a trout lily) - where are you located again?
I am glad my memory was good enough to have actually known it was Jack In the Pulpit ---> that neighbor in Bethel, NC was the first person I ever met who told me about special native plants in the mountains here (like ramps, may apple, jack in the pulpit ect...) She was making cool native gardens.

Gratuitous-
Now I am all confused... are you describing the look alike carnivorous plant, or the Jack In The Pulpit? As far as flies go.

I met a man who ate poison ivy! The guy who runs the LBEEC in Leicester ate some right in front of me, he said if you ate a little of the new emerging leaf it would prevent you from caching poison ivy on your skin. :0
Since I dont catch it, i don't think I'll be eating it.
Would you eat it?

Gratuitous said...

The Jack in the Pulpit is pollinated - not nourished - by flies, yes.

Liberty said...

hi Leslie,

we do have a lot of similar plants!
I can't recall where you are.
I'm in southwestern Ontario (in Canada)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Southwestern_Ontario

except for one tiny little bit of southwestern BC, we have the warmest growing zone in Canada of 7. a few other provinces also have some zone 7 in their most southerly regions. (I'd still love to live somewhere a LOT warmer though LOL)
in this area there is actually some predominantly oak 'carolinian' forest which is really nice.