A FEW years ago one of our open garden day visitors presented me with a Cobra Lily (Arisarum vulgare). Plants are the best present, and a totally unexpected but welcome gift from a complete stranger even more so, but I worried from the word go that I wouldn't be able to grow it.
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This was because this small Arum, like so many members of its large family, loves damp shade, not a condition that occurs often in my garden.
Also, my kind donor told me she came from Vittoria, high on the ranges between Bathurst and Orange, where the climate is cooler and wetter than here, and the soil deeper, suited to the cultivation of damp-loving woodlanders.
However I was desperate not to lose her treasure, so I chose the most favoured spot I could find, in the shade of some deciduous lilacs near some Winter Roses (Helleborus orientalis), added a bucket of leaf mould to the planting hole, watered everything in and hoped for the best.
For years nothing much happened. Small, arrow shaped, pale green leaves faintly mottled white appeared spasmodically and then vanished for months on end.
Occasionally I mulched the bed and sometime later the speckled leaves would re-emerge, only to die away again. I never saw any flowers.
Then, weeding among some hellebores recently, I noticed several unobtrusive purple-brown spikes among some nearby leaves and discovered my Cobra Lily had not only survived and multiplied during years of dry shade, it was actually flowering. Few things could have given me more pleasure.
There are three species of Cobra Lily, though only two are commonly available in Australia, A. vulgare and A. proboscideum, the latter aka Mouse Plant because of the elongated apex of the flower spathe - the mouse's tail.
Both come from Mediterranean regions. In the wild the Mouse Plant is found in marshes and moist, shady woodland but the Cobra Lily occurs in sunnier habitats, often in rocky crevices, and is therefore the better of the two for Australian conditions and doubtless the reason my plant survived for so long and indeed spread.
Both normally flower in late winter and early spring, so - as with much of my garden right now - I'm assuming the recent blooming was provoked by the unusually heavy March rain.
I have to admit a Cobra Lily is exactly the type of unobtrusive, slightly eccentric plant that appeals more to female gardeners than males.
Blokes tend to look for bold, colourful, broad acre effect (preferably yesterday), the last thing they want is to be forced to crouch down in damp undergrowth and peer at something 15 centimetres high striped brown and green.
However I'm totally charmed by my new gem and can even handle it being deciduous in hot weather. This helps protect it from drought although creates a bare patch over summer.
I inadvertently overcame the problem by planting it among hellebores in a spot that's more or less out of sight from October onwards. I imagine that normally it would flower simultaneously with the hellebores; I can only wait and see.
Arum italicum would be a beautiful foliage plant to complement a Cobra Lily. It has similar but bigger, arrow-shaped leaves, distinctively veined grey and cream, and autumn spikes of scarlet berries.
It loves dry shade, so I remove its berries and save them for a bonfire before they seed everywhere.
Bryan H. Tonkin offers a wide range of interesting small bulbs and perennials by mail order, including Cobra Lilies. Write to: 375 Olinda Creek Road, Kalorama, Victoria 3766, or contact (03) 9728 1295 or visit www.tonkinsbulbs.com.au
