Ol' Jack
Ol’ Jack
I’ve always been fascinated with Jack-in-the-Pulpit flowers. The idea of a green flower just seemed strange, stealth, and curious to me as a little kid going to a botanical garden with my mom and older sister when she was in Brownies.
As I get old, I can remember some things that happened a long time ago with great detail and clarity. However, the exact source of my Jack-in-the-Pulpit forest is not crystal clear. I know that I transplanted it to our home in Grand Rapids in 1982 and I believe it came from my parent’s home on Old Mission Peninsula in the 1970’s, but I am not certain of that.
While it lived in Grand Rapids, I do not recall that it ever produced fruit or went to seed and I am certain that it never spread. It was huge, however. Some years it was waist high with a flower the size of a tennis ball and leaves the size of a large frying pan.
So, when we moved to Holland in 2007, I dug it up and transplanted it here. Every year, it gains siblings or offspring. Ol’ Jack, which is what I call the forty something original plant, promptly started producing berries and seeds the first year it was in Holland. It seems to really like the humus rich soil and rotting bark chips that our landscapers spread every spring.
Attached are several pictures starting the beginning of May and concluding in August. The first few pictures are only about a week apart, while the dried leaves and red berries are a couple of months later. Every year I hang the fruit in the garage over the winter and replant them in early spring. If you’d like a few of the seeds, let me know in March of 2020 and I’ll be glad to send you a some.
UPDATE 5/13/2022: After moving to Ann Arbor, we went back to our condo in Holland MI and brought a bit of the father plant back to A2 with us. I honestly had great hopes trying to put the reality of SOLID clay in our soil here in Ann Arbor out of my mind. When I say solid clay, I mean solid. One could scoop out a shovel full of it, dump it onto a potters wheel, and you’d be in business. There is nothing in the soil remotely resembling loose, loamy, organic decomposition with a substrata of beach sand like we had in spades in our yard in Holland. In spite of the extremely inhospitable terroir here, Ol’ Jack (now something close to 50 years old) has survived!!! He poked his horney green head out this morning for a look at his new environment. Lets hope he likes what he sees.
A couple of other transplants haven’t shown up yet. Our 100 year old Peony (originally planted by a nearly 80 year old friend’s mother) has not yet surfaced and our ancient fig tree brought to the US by my grandfather in the 1920’s still appears dormant. Let’s hope both are as adaptable as ol’ Jack and willing to keep us company for our remaining years.
Enjoy the wonder of nature,