Native Plants

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Thursday - July 08, 2010

From: Holland, MI
Region: Midwest
Topic: Plant Identification
Title: Plant identification
Answered by: Nan Hampton

QUESTION:

Found in a cedar swamp near Wolverine Michigan. Large dinner plate size flat green leaf on a mottled green and brown fleshy stem of about 8 or 10 inches. I first thought it was a tri-leaf plant but it was a deeply lobed leaf. one leaf on each stem. Sorry no pictures.

ANSWER:

Were you, perhaps, seeing the leaves of Arisaema triphyllum (Jack in the pulpit) without its flower? The leaves are near the size of a dinner plate with three leaflets per leaf and they grow in moist places. Click here, again here and, once more, here for more information with photos for the Jack-in-the-pulpit.

Podophyllum peltatum (mayapple) is another possibility, but its leaf usually has more than three lobes.

Arisaema triphyllum