Southern friar's cowl
Arisarum simorrhinum
Family · Araceae · Poisonous
Read this before the sheet
This plant, or one that resembles it, is dangerous. Identifying is not authorising: no app has the authority to tell you that you may eat or touch a plant.
The most photographed plant in Portugal that this guide was missing. It makes the same striped friar's hood as common friar's cowl, but larger, appearing with the first rains when everything else is dry.
Scrubland · Montado · Walls and rocks · Oak woods
Also known aslarge friar's cowl
How to tell it
Arrow or heart-shaped leaves, large, green and glossy, on a long stalk rising from the ground. The inflorescence is a curved tube striped brown and whitish, clearly larger than in common friar's cowl, with a more open hood and the dark appendage protruding outward and down. It grows from a tuberous rhizome.
What it is confused with
Friar's cowl
Arisarum vulgare
They are very close and grow side by side. This is larger in everything, its hood more open and the dark appendage clearly projected outward; the common one is small and its hood closes more on itself. Both are toxic and neither is tasted.
Open sheet →What it is for
None. Like all aroids it holds needle-shaped calcium oxalate crystals that pierce mucous membranes: mouth and throat swell at once and the rhizome causes severe inflammation. Its larger size makes it more tempting, which is why it needs saying.