Arum lily

While it is entirely possible to have a fondness for rambling roses and hollyhocks or a soft spot for pansies and primulas, for a flower as singularly imposing as Zantedeschia aethiopica, one can surely only have admiration. In the world of plants, the arum lily is the Grace Jones. Handsome rather than pretty, but still very feminine. Aloof. Architectural. Commanding.

Arum lilies picked in Melrose
©Alan Dicks 2012

Their cold, otherworldly purity makes them the funeral flower of choice for many European cultures, and they have a long association with the Christian tradition of bereavement. But their serpentine structure and natural predisposition to stylisation also made them a favourite of the Art Nouveau movement.

Gates to the Villa O. Schützenberger
http://artnouveau.pagesperso-orange.fr/en/villes/strasbourg/batiments/robertsau76.htm

When I first moved to Wellington, I was delighted to find arum lilies growing wild all around the Town Belt. There is (still, I hope) a particularly spectacular early spring display in what I call the Valley of the Lilies directly above Oriental Bay. Unfortunately, Zantedeschia are classified as pest plants in New Zealand. So by taking an armful of stems for the vase occasionally, I feel like I'm making a small contribution to Wellington's hard-working weedbusters. 

To be honest, where arum lilies are concerned, I find the Council's zero tolerance approach somewhat heavy-handed. To my absolute horror, today I found my favourite local patch - a steep-sided gully half way down Sutherland Road - had been savagely blitzed with Roundup. Where there should have been a stately stand of lilies floating on a peppery green sea of nasturtium leaves, there was just a barren brown wasteland. Given that the Council is unlikely to plant an equally appealing landscape of natives in this gully, I see neither a civic nor an ecological benefit for their actions. The nasturtiums are already coming back, and the arums won't lie dormant for long. But there'll be no harvest from there this spring - I'll have to risk life and limb plundering the more precarious slopes further along, where even the weedbusters fear to tread!