Arisaema zhui (Araceae)
Plants deciduous. Tuber subglobose, cream-colored, 3–4 × 5–7cm. Cataphyll pink, with brown mottling, 1–20cm. Leaf solitary; petiole red-brown or olive-green with transverse paler mottling, 60–80cm, proximal 35–45cm forming pseudostem, ca. 1.5cm in diam. at base; leaf blade radiate; leaflets 12–14, sessile to subsessile, glaucous with slightly prominent carmine or green veins abaxially, shiny green adaxially, elliptic, 20–30 × 3–4cm, base cuneate, margin flat or undulate, green or red, apex acuminate, often prolonged into a carmine thread to 9cm; veins slightly impressed adaxially. Peduncle green with paler mottling, becoming red-violet toward inflorescence, shorter than petioles, 35–60cm × 4–5mm. Spathe tube outside pruinose, dark purple or pale olive-green with thin white stripes, inside pale carmine with white stripes, funnelform, 7–8cm, 1.2–1.5cm in diam. at base, 3–4.5cm in diam. apically; throat margins straight, dark carmine; limb horizontal, outside dark purple, with very faint paler stripes, inside dark purple, pale green at base, with broad white stripes anastomosing in a central white spot at throat level, ovate, 9–10 × 5–6cm, nearly as long as tube, apex acuminate, prolonged into a purple, filamentous tail to 20cm. Spadix unisexual; female zone of same shape and size as male zone; ovaries dense, pale green, bottle-shaped, 1.5–2mm in diam.; stigma sessile, penicillate, surrounded by black annulus; male zone subcylindric, 2–3 × ca. 0.6cm; synandria loosely arranged, consisting of 2–4 anthers; anthers lilac, subsessile or borne on a white-green short stalk; thecae dehiscent by an oblong pore; pollen white. Appendix sessile, slightly exserted from spathe tube, erect, cylindric, to 7cm × 5mm, middle part green sometimes with carmine stripes above neuter flowers, apex white-green, rounded, even or spongy; neuter flowers upcurved, green, 3–4mm, numerous in female spadix only. Infructescence cylindric, ca. 5 × 1.5–2.5cm, borne on a nodding peduncle. Berries dense, red-orange with black stigmatic remains, ca. 7 × 3 mm, 1- or 2-seeded. Seeds globose, ca. 2mm; testa cream-colored.
This material was reprinted with permission from the Missouri Botanical Garden Press, St. Louis, and Science Press, Beijing.
This material was reprinted with permission from the Missouri Botanical Garden Press, St. Louis, and Science Press, Beijing.
Mountain forests along roadsides, sometimes growing as an epiphyte on mossy tree trunks.