Here there be Dragons

A few years ago I attended a walk at the Chippewa Nature Center titled Hunting for Green Dragons.  Up to that point I had never heard of these bizarre cousins of the more familiar Jack in the Pulpit.  We found our Dragons that night, and ever since I have been hooked.  The next spring at the Native Plant Sale I picked up a few tiny baby plants.  Since that first sale I have added a new more.  My garden is now an unofficial Green Dragon Sanctuary. 
Like the Jack in the Pulpit the Dragon plant consists of one compound leaf and one flower.  As a member of the Arum family (or Araceae), the Dragon flower follows the normal design of a central Spadix ( a club shaped structure holding the true flowers) surrounded by a protective Spathe.  In the Jack in the Pulpit, Jack is the spadix and the pulpit is the spathe. 
The Dragon takes this in a slightly different direction.  The spadix projects from the spathe by several inches, looking like the tongue of a dragon.  While the flower is a plain green, the fan shaped leaf is what really stands out.  The Jack leaf is composed of three equal leaflets.  The Dragon leaf is a semi-circular fan composed of up to thirteen parts.  Once identified, it is unmistakable.
The dragons also come up quite a bit later than Jack.  I thought I had lost my oldest and largest specimens, only to have them appear a full month after my Jack's had appeared.  My Dragons range in size from some tiny new plants to the Trio, each about a foot tall,

  to the giant pair, the tallest over two feet tall.

Hidden among my Sasparilla plant is the thick new sprout of my giant Dragon.

One plant produced two leaves this year, with the flower projecting between them.

Like the Jack, the Dragon flower is followed by a cluster of berries that turn orange to red.  Also like the Jack, the Dragon contains calcium oxalate crystals, rendering them inedible