Description
(syn. thunbergii urashima Murasaki Zuisyou)
The type species is esteemed as an elegant dwarf Japanese species (with naturally small tubers) which makes its good-sized spathe quite close to the ground. The wild form of this is variable but it usually pale to almost white speckled with purple-brown at the base, darkening to purple at the very flared mouth. The two regions being connected with lines of purple dots. The spathe wraps around an elongated chocolate spadix that winds up and out of the spathe and finally makes its way down to the ground.
A. urashima Murasaki Suisho is an extremely rare Japanese clonal cultivar, selected originally for its amazing, very deeply and intensely coloured, purple-black spathes which are quite unlike the pale colourations of the usual plant. The mouth of the spathe is also deep and dark in colour however the depth and intensity of the colouring vastly exceeds that of the type plant, being deep, almost violet-black. Seeing is believing and our pictures are not “improved” or tinted in any way. The Japanese symbols for this form translate as “amethyst”. These are vegetatively propagated tubers, not seedlings, to preserve the true colourings.
Thrives in the garden, in a light, leafy soil preferably in half-shade and hardy here.
Introduced to our lists January 2024. Our numbers each year and extremely limited, in 2023 we had just 2, for 2024 we have 3.
