A reader of Rotten Botany gracioulsy sent me pictures of this gorgeous Dead Horse Arum that came up in the garden of her home in the Sierra Foothills in spite of a heavy snowfall this winter. As she wrote to me, it is located in the back corner of the garden so its scent isn’t too permeating.
I agree with the owner that this is a Dead Horse Arum. The Arum Konjac or Devil’s Tongue has a red stamen, and the Voodoo Lily has a moddled stem. The Vampire Lily seems to have more of a ruffled edge to the flower but it does look similar to this. They are all members of the same Araceae family. mmmm..ARUMS!
Thanks, Mary A. for this amazing pictures. I have to admit, I am super jealous. I’ve always dreamed of moving into an overgrown garden with hidden creepers and fetid florals lurking beneath the ivy. Who planted this arum there? It was no accident. Read more about the Dead Horse Arum on Rotten Botany HERE.
And if you have pictures of any unsusal plants growing let me know!
rottenbotany 
They’re baaaaaaaaaaack! My single has morphed into three plants. I had to flee my bedroom the past two nights to avoid the stench…ah me! I fear I will have to hasten their demise this year. Like “Day of the Triffids” they have me surrounded. (Foothills grower.)
LOL!!! Is it weird to tell you I am jealous??
[…] As I stopped to admire a particularly thick patch of Black Mondo Grass in the Ashbury Heights neighborhood where I had wandered, a sentence popped into my head. “What doesn’t kill you makes your garden grow stronger.” And thus, I began Rotten Botany, a blog about the many unusual, wonderful, dark, stinky, and amazing plants , indulging myself with writing about those plants that knew and loved, new plants I wanted to learn about, or anything I stumbled upon late at night when googling “corpse flower” or “ethnobotanical properties of Dead Horse Arum“. […]
I have a plant that looks like this one growing in my yard. We have lived here for forty years and every year this plant would come up. The last couple of years it has been prolific and now there are several. They are done blooming now, and one is bent and brown but it has this green cluster of probably seed pods on the end of it. I wonder what I can do, if they are seeds, to make them fertile so I can give them to my friends to plant, should they want to. Should I pick them now/leave them there for a while? Forgive me if this is dumb, pulling weeds is about the extent of my gardening skills.
Hi,
I am not 100% sure on the exact time to pick them. It does depend a little bit on your climate and weather, but…in general if you let the flowers go to seed, then the seed pod forms (as you described) if you leave it there until it seems like it is close to falling off on its own and then pick it, you can save them over the winter and plant them in the ground in the spring. Let me know if it works. It may take them a few years to get to the point where they are blooming–a lot of the arums seem to need several years of leafing to get enough energy to bloom. How lucky that you have this growing!!
The thing is, I have never smelled a bad smell from them. How can I post pictures of them?