ARUM ’ITMA’

PARENTAGE:

Putatively Arum italicum × Arum maculatum, read from the cultivar name. No source records the cross.

DESCRIPTION:

The first selection to combine silver veins with purple spots.

NOTES:

1. Published at genus level, as Arum without a species epithet, which is how a selection of unestablished hybrid origin is named. Monksilver Nursery attributes selections of this kind to the influence of both Arum italicum and Arum maculatum.¹

2. The cultivar name reads as a contraction of the two parent epithets, ITalicum and MAculatum, and the plant matches: it was the first selection to combine the silver veining of Arum italicum with the purple spotting of Arum maculatum.¹ Arum naming has a precedent for the device — the nothospecific name coined for the cross between Arum dioscoridis and Arum italicum contracts those two epithets the same way.² The reading is an inference from the name and the leaf, not a breeding record; no source states the cross.

REFERENCES:

1. Monksilver Nursery — Arum

2. Juniper Level Botanic Garden — Arum world

Additional photos by Monksilver Nursery