lost tag of jack

Nancy, great to see you here!  Welcome!

I certainly don't know my Jack in the Pulpits, but that one definitely has an interesting conglomeration of leaflets at that stage of growth.  I suspect we'll need to wait for them to mature for an ID, and maybe a better pic of the club in the center of the flower would help, too.  If you mention what part of the country you garden is in, it might help narrow the choices.

But you never know: a picture really is worth a thousand words...

Thanks Rick, I got this from Asiatica while they were still in business.  I know it is a Japanese one.  It is tall and thin and comes up really early before any of the others. 

Hello Nancy, welcome to the NARGS Forum.

While I'm no Arisaema expert, your mystery jack looks very familiar to me, matching I plant I was growing (which came to me 2nd hand from Asiatica) as A. tashiroi.  Here are a few photos of my A. tashiroi to compare to your plant. After a good number of years reliably blooming in my garden, sadly it did not come back last spring.  However, several years back a garden hybrid between it and A. amurense appeared; it's a robust grower with the same beautiful snake-skin mottling on the emerging stem sheath, but with larger flowers more closely matching A. amurense.

I do remember it starting with a T...and that sure does resemble mine.  Many thanks and I will take another pic. when more fully developed.

With those long drip tails and early emergence I would guess A.taiwanense

This one does not have the long whip

taken today

Seeing it again, I still think it looks like A. tashiroi; the characteristic that is distinctive is the long slender tube to the flower, and a very short hood that barely bends over in hood fashion.  When the leaflets (which should be many) fully expand, post another photo.  Looking at my past photos, for me this species (along with most jacks) don't break ground until May, but I suspect our season is much later than yours.  By the way, I hope you don't mind, there were two identical photos posted, so I edited the message and to not include the duplicate. :)

By the way Nancy, where do you garden?  May I recommend adding some basic geographic location information to your forum profile, so that forumists can offer information or advice tailored for your location, see "FAQ - Your Profile - 3. Forum Profile Information & Signature Block"    http://nargs.org/smf/index.php?topic=461.0

Thanks, I do not know how two pictures got on here and I thought I had changed my profile to read Baltimore, Md.