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Dragon Arum, Dracunculus vulgaris

Jeremy Bartlett's LET IT GROW blog Posted on by
Dragon Arum at the allotment

Dragon Arum at the allotment

In my post on the Bird of Paradise Flower I mentioned how I’d seen a couple of prints from Thornton’s Temple Of Flora on the walls of the Room of the Nine Nobles at Crathes Castle in Aberdeenshire (formerly Kincardineshire) when I worked there as a tourist guide.

One was of Bird Of Paradise Flower and the other was of Dragon Arum, Dracunculus vulgaris. I was fascinated by this spectacular member of the Arum family, Araceae and the drama of the print, with an erupting volcano in the background, only made it more fascinating.

Eventually I managed to grow the plant, which is a native of southern Europe. I forget where I bought it but I planted the tuber at the allotment. In the first year or two the plant produced its divided leaves but no flowers. Then in 2007 the plant flowered – a magnificent deep purple-black spathe enclosing a purple-black spadix. In good soil the plant can grow to three feet tall, but it grew less well in my allotment’s dry, sandy soil.

The flower appears in late June and is pollinated by flies and its structure is similar to our native Cuckoo Pint (Arum maculatum). But Dragon Arum has what the BBC Plant Finder describes as a flower that is “gloriously foul smelling and is surrrounded by clouds of droning flies”, an accurate description.

After flowering Dragon Arum dies down and no trace of it survives after about mid July. Sadly the plant hasn’t flowered again, probably because we’ve had so many dry springs recently, so the plant barely manages to put on leaves before it dies down. But at least it flowered – once…

For more on Dragon Arum see these websites:

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