Arisaema 2013

And what a beautiful plant (and photo) to start this thread with. 

Does this species tend to produce multiple cormlets?

Just like I said on your Facebook posting of the same image "hoot hoot". ;D  The flowers look just like a little owl.

Gene, that's a mighty impressive colony, like a gaggle of geese.  Did you grow these from seed?  Your climate is more advanced than mine, my plants just broke ground a couple days ago.

Gene wrote:

Arisaema sikokianum, grown from seed:

When growing these from seed how many years to bloom? I have quite a number of seedlings now that were sown 2-3 years ago.

Amy: I don't know how long it takes from seed for many Arisaema species, but I have been getting seed from the Arisaema Enthusiast Group, and have been pushing the seedlings along. As soon as they go dormant, I unpot them, and place the tuberlets in a ziplock plastic bag, and they go into the fridge for 2 to 3 months. This lets me start them into growth at least twice per year. With plenty of feeding, it is possible to cut a year or more off the time to first bloom. I am hoping to speed up the growth of several other species this way (ciliatum var liubaense, consanguineum with silvered foliage, fargesii, heterophyllum, jaquemontii, serratum, sikokianum, and tortuosum).Now if only the new seeds would arrive for this season's effort (candidissimum, costatum, and limbatum).

So Gordon, then some of the growth cycles of your seedlings are completely under artificial lights?

Rick: Wish it were so! I've been growing them in a window if the weather is too cold to use the unheated greenhouse. My first try with pushing them along involved A. consanguineum. The newly sprouted seedlings went dormant quickly, so I had tuberlets about the size of a pea. I re-started them into growth in the house a bit too early and had thin attenuated growth.... but still growth in late winter. They went dormant in spring and I got them going again for the latter part of summer (this time in the greenhouse). All but two of them are already up (southeast window of the house). I started them up a few months ago, as the days were getting longer, and made sure to rotate the pots once they had emerged. The new growth is now complete, totally vertical, and self supporting. I think a few of these nay get to blooming size before this growth cycle is done.

Ron, both tortuosum and flavum are impressive.  I've had seed-grown plants of A. flavum last a couple years but they never flowered and eventually gave up.

I agree about A. triphyllum, extremely variable, so it's fun to find different forms, it remains one of my favorite even if it is common.  Roland, the one you show has nice dark purplish stems, I have selected a number of such dark-stemmed ones. This will also hybridize with other species.

A hybrid occured in my garden about 8-9 years ago, between A. amurense and tashiroi.  After about 6 years I lost A. tashiroi, but the hybrid lives on; I have several of these, the hybrid inherits the snake-skin mottled stem of A. tashiroi.