Only a tiny batch of jack-in-the-pulpits this year (2nd-3rd year seedlings) of ones that seeded into less-than-ideal-locations. These take 2 years to grow from seed before you’ll see the first leaf, and the first flowers appear at the 3-4 year mark.
All young plants start out as male only, and it takes a few more years for them to reach the maturity needed to reproduce and set seed. Thats when they do what I think is the coolest aspect of these species… they trap fungus gnats!
The males do not trap them. The fungus gnats, which pollinate the flowers, are able to exit out of a tiny hole in the spathe, which you can see at the bottom right of the spathe in the photo. Female flowers, however, close this up. The fungus gnats will go around to the males and get out the hole. Once they make it to a female flower, once they get in, they can’t get out. that makes these one of the rare femme fatale plant genera.
Where these love to grow, in consistently moist soils (clay is fine) with plenty of mulch or leaf litter (because you need fungus for fungus gnats), they make an excellent fungus trap. After the plants die back in midsummer, the pollinated stem remains upright, producing a large cluster of bright red oily berries that are a great food source for overwintering birds.
Once you have these on your property, you will start to see them popping up everywhere after a few years. Great plant to naturalize. Second photo shows one of my oldest clumps, which popped up on their own years ago. They will reproduce by offsets, so all the plants in this photo are clones of the parent. However, any new ones that pop up in other locations will have grown from seed.
As far as I know, these are local PA ecotype. They are easy to keep happy, and although they prefer to grow in shady moist woodlands, I have them in full sun conditions, where they popped up naturally. The key point is consistently moist soil. Mesic woods just tend to be safer because they are slower to dry out.
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