PLANTS I Lords and Ladies. Holbeton, Devon, England

I give you Arum Maculatum. Illustration by Kate R-G.

You can leave your Latin at the front door, this plant is also known by some much sexier names. This is because it is said to resemble male and female genitalia symbolising copulation. So now you know.

The male spadix (the cock shaped bit) is usually purple and has hairs at the base, obvs. The sometimes purple spotted leaf (the vulva shaped bit) closes to trap insects for a few hours pollen collecting before unfurling, hence one other name: flycatcher. According to the inestimable Richard Mabey, the pollen itself has faint glow in the dark capabilities giving the plant two other nicknames: Fairy lamps or shiners. The spadix gives off heat (I kid you not) which encourages smelly faecal (shit) compounds that attract the insects for pollen spreading. This little hot rod can even melt snow to aid its survival. Not many men can make that claim.

There are more than 60 recorded names and some of them are corkers. Snake’s Meat, Lady’s Smock, Adder’s Tongue, Parson and Clerk, Lady’s Keys, Long purple, Soldiers and Sailors, Bloody Man’s Thumb, Adam and Eve, Goat’s Ear, Tender Ear, Sucky Calves, Devils and Angels, Soldiers Diddies, Sonsie Give us your Hand, Priest in the Pulpit, Jack in the Green, Cheese and Toast…. as The Anxious Gardener says ‘if you really wish to cut to the chase, move to Wiltshire where it is known simply as Dog’s cock’.

One of the most common names is Cuckoo-pint. Pint comes from the old English word for Penis: Pintle. Cuckoo means: lively. Yes, that does translate as lively penis. In medieval times it was used as an aphrodisiac, those medieval types only judged a book by its cover it seems. More recently young German men used to put a flower in their shoe to bring success with women. Surely not that recently though. The most common name seems to be Lords’ and Ladies’, the sexual meaning of which changes greatly if you use apostrophe’s or not, sounding either full of Victorian proprietary or gender specificity. As well as being an aphrodisiac it’s also one of the UK’s five most toxic plants. Weird. Using it as an aphrodisiac must be the botanical equivalent of autoerotic asphyxiation. This arum is one of the most common causes of accidental plant poisoning based on attendance figures at hospital emergency departments. Hopefully, this is unconnected.

If you want to see some centrifuged spadix (and who wouldn’t) click here

You can buy Richard Mabey’s fantastic book on plants here