Dracunculus

Dracunculus vulgaris 'Royal Ruby'

The Vulgar Dragon Awakens

Over two weeks behind this winter, the new growth of the Mediterranean native, Dracunculus vulgaris has finally emerged. This lovable monster is now only a few weeks away from showing off its foul-smelling, phallic, but visually fascinating inflorescence, a large maroon spathe with a dark purple spadix. Watching this is sort of like a train

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Desperate Aroids – The adventures of Phallicity

The spring garden at JLBG has a number of phallic moments if you’re lucky enough to catch them. Here are a few of our favorites. Below is a color echo we created, using Pig’s Butt Arum (Helicodiceros muscivorus) and Salvia x nemorosa. We’re sure you’ll want to recommend this combination for everyone in your HOA.

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Adding Vulgarity to the Garden

We love “vulgar” plants, which are good for providing unexpected shrieks from garden visitors. One of our favorite plants for evoking such moments is the European native, Dracunculus vulgaris. For those who took Latin in school, you’ll know that the English translation of the Latin name is Vulgar Dragon’s Butt. This fascinating spring ephemeral is

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Canary Treasure

This is our first flowering of Dracunculus canariensis, the rare cousin of the more commonly-grown aroid Dracunculus vulgaris. Dracunculus canariensis hails from Madeira (reportedly extinct) and the nearby Canary Islands, all off the coast of Morocco. We inherited our specimen from the late plantsman, Alan Galloway, who planned to cross it with Dracunculus vulgaris. The

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Dazzling vulgarities

Flowering in the garden now are the amazing and very rare white-flowered Dracunculus vulgaris. This wild and crazy aroid, which typically has a red/purple inflorescence, hails from the Mediterranean region, centered around Greece and Turkey. The late aroid guru Alan Galloway worked extensively to breed these, and since we now hold his collections, we wanted

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