To all my friends who are mothers, whether naturally, by marriage, spiritually or through adoption: Happy Mother’s Day.
Don took me shopping yesterday. We were looking for some specific plants to add to our garden (his gift to me for bearing his children). We had to find a nursery that carried the plants he wanted to buy: not everyone specializes in odd plants. The one we found doesn’t have a web site and has only been in business for a little over a year, specializing in orchids. We weren’t looking for orchids, but Hana Farms has recently expanded to include ariseaema – and we were looking for aroids. (A little free advertising for the nursery: they’re located at 1600 SW Borland Road in Tualatin. Right under the freeway, across from Southlake Foursquare Church).
Their collection was a little disorganized, but the gal working there knew where everything was and directed us to three very interesting plants, one of which will eventually grow to be two meters tall. We picked out ariseaema tortosum, ariseaema speciosum, and ariseaema costatum.
We already have arum italicum Miller – the house came with this particular arum growing wild in the yard. At first, I thought someone threw out a houseplant because the leaves look so much like a philodendron. I learned yesterday that philodendrons are aroids.
We also have the dracunculus vulgarius. We dug it up when we moved out of a rental some 20 years ago on the theory that the next residents would never appreciate it and it’s unique aroma as much as we did. It was a solitary plant then, and we have moved it several times as we moved around. We even kept it dormant in a box when we lived in an apartment with no yard of our own. It has multiplied to the point where we had seven in bloom at once last summer and it looks like we will have easily that many blooms again, in just a few weeks’ time. It smells like rotten hamburger and does not make a very good cut flower, but you can’t have everything.
Last summer, I sat down and painted a watercolour of some of the blooms. 
