I've wondered what these are for quite a while, ever since I first saw them in a corner of the Memory Garden behind the Pacific House in Monterey. Lately I've seen them more and more in yards here in town. I attribute their recent proliferation to Trader Joe's offering cheap, decorative potted plants. Unfortunately, while you shop for pseudo-organic, cleverly packaged food products, many of their potted plants only include generic care instructions for water and sunlight without any identifying label. This is the first time I've seen these growing in the "wild" outside of a tended garden. Given Elkhorn Slough's history as a farm and the proximity of this bunch under an oak tree next to one of the barns, I suspect this is a waif from the past.
Without seeing the leaves or flowers, I can't easily tell which of the 25 spp. of Arum this is. Calflora and Jepson eFlora list only Italian lords and ladies (A. italicum) and black calla (A. palaestinum, A. palestinum seems to be a misspelling) as occurring in CA. The ones in the Memory Garden have a striking deep purple spathe, like the black calla, aka Solomon's lily, but several Arum spp. are also black. If I had ignored the bright orange color of the fruit, I may have been able to figure out this was related to the locally prolific calla lilies (which surprisingly I don't have as a featured ID yet). Oddly enough Arum and calla lilies are in the same Araceae family as duckweed. Weird.
ps 08/19/13 - For a fun post on the related cuckoo pint (A. maculatum), check out Cabinet of Curiosities.
ps 08/19/13 - For a fun post on the related cuckoo pint (A. maculatum), check out Cabinet of Curiosities.
