JACK-IN-THE-PULPIT (Arisaema triphyllum), a North American plant of the arum family (Araceae), called also Indian turnip, bog-onion, brown-dragon and starchwort, native to wet woods and thickets from Nova Scotia to Minnesota and south ward to Florida and Texas. It is a stoutish perennial, 1 to 21 ft. high, rising from an acrid corm and usually bearing two long stalked, three-parted, dull green leaves, which overshadow the con spicuous green- and purple-striped flowering spathe that rises on a separate stalk between them. The flowering spathe curves in a broad canopy-like portion over the top of a club-shaped spadix, 2 to 3 in. long, near the base of which, concealed within the en closing spathe, are borne the minute flowers, the staminate and pistillate commonly though not always found on different plants.
Fertilization is aided by small insects, especially gnats of the genus Mycetophila. The fruit, a handsome cluster of brilliant red ber ries, ripens in late summer. This interesting aroid, in many re spects a North American counterpart of the British cuckoo-pint (q.v.), is ono of the best-known late spring wild flowers of the eastern United States and Canada. The exceedingly pungent, starchy corm, which is made edible by boiling, was formerly used for food by the Iroquois and other American Indians. (See