...Arum palaestinum, the Palestine Lily.
Like many others, I was lucky enough to find this plant popping up on its own. It was already emerging when I bought my place in Monrovia. I moved in during January, and noticed apparent Calla foliage under the fig tree. Ho-hum, I thought, expecting the standard white lily.
Then the thing bloomed. Wow. Luckily I was working at a nursery at the time, and a co-worker helped me ID the plant.
Since then I have found out that it is rare and coveted; currently 8 people on DavesGarden.com are seeking bulbs, and the volunteers at the Los Angeles Arboretum lit up when I promised them plantlets. (Gloria, I have not forgotten!) Apparently it was popular during the Victorian era. I can't see why it would have lost popularity.
But if you knew what I've been through with this plant...how many times it looked as though I were trying to eradicate it when I only wished to preserve it. How did such misfortune befall my garden? Oh, I had help!
I mentioned offhand to my roommate, in 2004, that I really ought to dig up and pot some of them so the dogs wouldn't destroy them. Came home from work and found out that roomie had drilled a hole in one of my vintage cache pots (beyond "Grrrrr!"), dug up ALL the Arums he could find, and stuffed all of them into the one pot. I nearly flipped my lid, but did what I could to re-pot and salvage.
In 2005, I made a temporary cross-town move and took several plants with me; upon my return, I took the plants back to Monrovia. By summer they had dried out and died back and basically looked like pots of dry soil...which is why Francisco, my sometime-helper, threw them all out. Indeed, he did. (In 2007, he threw out my Dracunculus vulgaris, which had also died back to nothing in its pot.)
The following year I was thrilled to see a healthy flush of growth from the original site of my Arums; we hadn't destroyed the motherlode. Then Francisco's brother Lino came to do an annual clean-up. I forgot to tell him to leave the lilies alone, and he sure didn't. The area was bare when I got home from work. That was 2007.
This year I was relieved to see sprouts emerge from the ground and turn into plants, and also to find some new plants elsewhere on the property. Of my struggling group of plants, only one blossom was formed this year, but she was a beaut, as you can see.
And this year, you will be happy to know, I didn't touch the little buggers. And no one who wanted to live out the week did so, either.
Fingers crossed.
