Jack in the Pulpit

This is Jack in the Pulpit - Arisaema triphyllum - an enduring wildflower out here.

It endures probably because it's poisonous and the deer don't eat it.

The blasted deer eat everything.  

Everything.

Including every last one of the leaves on my brand new plum tree.   Which really ticked me off.   And which I took as a personal affront.  

If I ever meat meet that deer, it will be dinner.   My dinner.  And it will probably be delicious as it has been subsisting on a diet of my orchard trees.

This is one happy Jack in the Pulpit.   Normally they are 8-24 inches high, but this one was easily 3 feet high.   Notice the two leaves - and each leaf has three lobes very similar to trillium leaves.     These bloom after the trilliums.

They make gorgeous shade garden plants.   And they're pretty easy, unless you accidentally weed them out, which has never, ever happened to me.   It's just that the Jack in the pulpits in my garden mysteriously disappeared that one day after I was weeding. 

It was a coincidence, I'm sure.