adrift
Why do we love the arum lily? For its beauty, of course, but also for its delicious contradictions. The arum lily is neither an arum (the genus Arum) nor a lily (genus Lilium). It is, instead, a Zantedeschia, a genus of African flower named for an Italian (Giovanni Zantedeschi) by a German (Curt Sprengel). In Molina di Ledro, the town of Zantedeschi’s birth, there is a botanical museum dedicated to him; it features neither arums nor lilies, nor even zantedeschia, but orchids.
This particular flower is called zantedeschia aethiopica, though it is not in any way linked to nation we know as Ethiopia. Despite the fact that this flower is not an Easter Lily (lilium longiflorum), being neither a lily nor in any way associated with Easter, it is the flower depicted in the Easter Lily badge worn by Irish Repubicans in remembrance of the men and women who died during the 1916 Easter Rising rebellion. In the United States, this is a popular cut flower and ornamental plant; in Australia, it’s classified as a toxic weed.
Why do we love the arum lily? It’s not a lily, not an arum; it’s not Ethiopian, not Italian, not Australian; it has nothing to do with Easter, nothing to do with rebellion. It is almost completely unrelated to everything it stands for. So why do we love the arum lily? For its beauty, of course, and for its delicious contradictions. But mostly for its beauty.
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