Re: foetid plants

Most of these plants smell the way they do to attract their pollinators.  Other plants smell foetid to deter animals from eating them.  You may like these sweeter smelling plants, and I'm sure the deer like them even better! 

Here at the UCBG, I have several arums in the Mediterranean collection.  I really love Arum purpureospathum.  It has a beautiful deep purple spathe, and it is less than 12" high. 

I guess for our own gardens at home, beauty lies in the eye and nose of the beholder!

happy autumn!

Bridget
Berkeley, Ca

At 08:54 PM 10/1/02 -0700, Paul Reid wrote:
When I was a teen, my father somehow acquired one of these arums that smells of rotting meat.  I found it disgusting.  When I lived in New Mexico, I had a wild vine in the cucurbitaceae that smelled like the worst smelly feet imaginable.  I did my best to eradicate it.  Am I the only plant lover out there who finds black phallic plants ugly, and when they smell like the sewer finds them disgusting?  I don't want them in my garden.  Sure, they might be "interesting" in the wild, but only in the academic sense.  I only plant roses that are fragrant, and have as many lovely smelling things in the garden as I can fit.  I flush things that smell like that arum; how could anyone want it near?
Give me gardenias, lavender, heliotrope, and tuberose.
Mind-boggled Karrie Reid
Folsom Gardener
P.S. I don't mean to be insulting, I am just truly baffled.
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