28 SEPTEMBER 1951, Page 18

Nature's Excess The year has been notable for two conspicuous

examples of nature's overplus. There are diminutive forests of the scarlet-knobbed clubs of the wild arum in every ditch, wood, thicket, hedge and waste. Assembled in such multitudes, these bizarre lilies have a flamboyantly oriental appearance, but at the same time seem, to belong to an archaic world ; formal, too, the berry-clustered spike squatting in front of its long tapered " leaf " or spathe, a Gothic gargoyle in its niche. No wonder one of its folk-names is Devil's Poker, but there are more gracious ones—Wake Robin, Lords-and-Ladies, Kings-and-Queens, Cuckoo-pint.