This summer, I’ve spent rather a lot of time in Morrisons’ car park. At times, I’ve made daily trips, just to look at the strange things unfurling there.
The place is full of all the predictable car-park planting – cotoneaster (which I may start guerrilla cloud-pruning), privet and box – plus lots of litter and undesirable desire lines. There’s a hell of a lot of bark mulch, too, which must be from the Mediterranean, for otherwise I have no idea how the dragon arum (Dracunculus vulgaris), a native to the Balkans, mainland Greece, Crete and the Aegean Islands, appeared.
As its name suggests, the dragon arum is something that roars and spits. It looks very much like a dragon may be hiding inside: a huge, red, arum-type flower, deep velvet-red with a huge, blackish-red spadix, rises out and then flops over. It is quite something, particularly when found in a car park in Stratford. I thought about stealing it, but I was reminded quite how stinky it gets in flower. As with all arums, the blood-red mouth is a pollination trick, there to convince flies there is something rotting inside in which they can lay their eggs. It does this very well, because there are always flies buzzing around, although the best arum for this has to be the pig butt arum (Helicodiceros muscivorus), which looks just like a pig’s bum and smells far worse than you can imagine. It is permanently dotted with flies when in flower.
Anyway, the dragon arum is better admired in the car park than in my small back garden. But if you wanted to plant one (or, indeed, a pig butt arum), now is the time to do it. This perennial goes dormant after flowering, some time between June and July. The large tubers are best planted now until early autumn, somewhere warm and sheltered from the worst of the coming winter rain. (If you miss this window, try for spring instead.) Plant the tubers 15cm deep in humus-rich, well-drained soil. They are used to a dry period after flowering, but they won’t do well if they dry out completely over winter and spring; you must find the balance between drying out and rotting off. Leaf mould, lots of grit and a good layer of bark mulch is the way to go, but, if Morrisons’ car park teaches us anything, it is that, when happy, they will take care of themselves and look magnificent for it.
It is practical as a container plant: once dormant, you can hide it away. Make sure you choose a big, deep pot: the flower can grow 1.5m tall and, although robust, it will snap in strong winds.
Arums do best in full sun but will thrive in part shade, which makes them useful under deciduous trees or against walls. And, despite the smell, the flowers are well worth it for their weirdness alone. It is a botanical curiosity that everyone should experience once. If nothing else, as Guardian country diarist Dr Phil Gates suggests, it would make a great practical joke. Send the unlabelled tuber to someone and tell them it is a great house plant.
