Biarum tenuifolium subsp. idomenaeum

I hadn't thought about my schoolboy chum dogbreath for some twenty years until a Biarum species I'd collected on Crete flowered for the first time in August last year. For the uninitiated, Biarum is a  genus of about 21 species in the Araceae, related to Arum, Dracunculus, Helicodiceros and Eminium, distributed in the Mediterranean and the Middle East. It attracts dung and carrion flies, Staphylinid beetles and a small but select cross-section of the human species, those with an interest in the weird and wonderful curiosites natural selection has thrown up across the aeons.

Tony Avent, whose nursery, Plant Delights (www.plant-delights.com), is one of the finest sources of unusual plants on the planet had invited me to accompany him and Alan Galloway on a short trip to Crete in April 2010. It was Tony who spied the approaching-dormant, narrow, undulate-margined leaves of the Biarum growing beneath thorny bushes, where the tubers were inaccessible to the ubiquitous and voracious goats that roam the island. I fancy myself a fairly talented plant-spotter but Tony's discovery was a feat of observational prowess sans pareil.

The dry hillside where the Biarum grows

Would you have spotted these leaves in the shade of a thorn bush?

When the largest of the few tubers I collected flowered, I took a photograph and sent it to David Stephens, Croconut-extraordinaire and one of our planet's handful of Biarum specialists. When the plants entered dormancy, in early summer this year, I sent David a couple of tubers, one of which sent up a flower unlike that of any other B. tenuifolium, in that it lacked staminodes above the male flowers.

Perhaps we were dealing with a new species here, David speculated and asked whether I'd take pictures of the plants I'd retained. Biarum inflorescences last only a few days and it seemed I had missed my chance to look for staminodes.

Biarum tenuifolium subsp. idomaeum

One tuber started flowering a clear week later than the others, however, and I brought it home on a Saturday morning, intending to post it to David on Monday for diagnosis. Saturday was a warm day and, when I returned home in the evening and wearily opened the front door I was greeted by a stench suggesting I was hosting the annual Wiltshire halitosis-sufferers convention, hence the instant return to the front of my mind of dogbreath. The association engine in the human brain is a wondrous thing.

Alas David found superior stamininodes on the new plant, placing it within the Cretan subspecies of B. tenuifolium. The chase had been fascinating, however, and I confessed to David feeling the first tugs of a new obsession. 'Please do get sucked in, I need another obsessive nutter to help me understand them.' He replied. He has sent me tubers of half a dozen species, the beginnings of a respectable collection and I look forward to other submerged memories resurfacing as they flower.