Photography by Marie Viljoen.
South Africa’s native arum lilies are known as calla lilies in the United States, where they are an expensive cut flower and a garden ornamental. But in their homeland, in the Southern Hemisphere’s winter and spring, it is possible to wallow in them, for free.
Zantedeschia aethiopica—the common arum lily.
Growing in, or near, seasonal streams and marshes, are arum lilies, like flocks of long-necked white water birds visiting the wetlands that burgeon as the rain of months accumulates before seeping into the Table Mountain Group aquifer, or running out to sea.
Arums growing in a greenbelt in the Cape Town suburb of Newlands. In South Africa it is not confined to winter rainfall regions like the Western Cape Province, but grows happily in colder, drier climates, as long as plentiful summer rain feeds the plants after they break winter dormancy.
Arum lilies nestle under invasive poplar trees in a marshy greenbelt in Constantia, Cape Town. In Southern California, and especially in New Zealand and Western Australia (where they were banned for sale in 2006), they have become invasive.
In the wet winters of the Western Cape Province arum colonies remain evergreen. Spring in South Africa is usually associated with the magical, ephemeral eruption of wildflower carpets along the summer-dry West Coast and semi-desert hinterland of the Northern Cape Province.
Peak flowering season is late winter and spring, but flowers can be produced all year. Cooked young arum leaves, stems, and tubers were a traditional food in parts of South Africa.
Wild arum lilies are often collected by informal flower sellers and hawked at roadsides in and near Cape Town.
Tiny yellow arum frogs sometimes shelter inside the white spathes of the flower; spotting one is lucky, and rare.
The white, petal-like spathe is wrapped around the yellow (reproductive) spadix.
An arum bud, elegantly graceful.
Spring in Cape Town is still wood stove-weather. While white arums are often included in bridal bouquets globally, in South Africa they are still associated with death and with funerals, and some homes consider it inauspicious to bring them indoors.