Perennial herb, erect, to 2 m high or more with a conspicuously ringed stem. Leaves simple, alternate, blade oblong to narrowly lanceolate, 15-40 cm long on a shorter petiole, green with white spots and fleck or white with green spots and flecks. Flowers infrequently during the year; flowers many, borne tightly packed in a cylindrical spadix usually 14-17 cm long with an oblong-lanceolate, persistent, greenish or white spathe 15-25 cm long. Fruit a globose red-orange berry, infrequently formed in cultivation.

Analgesic, aphrodisiac, contraceptive, cyanogenetic, insecticide, rodenticide and sterilant.

PIER

Calcium oxalate, dumbcain (plant)

For angina, bite, cancer, cold, corn, dropsy, impotence, inflammation, swelling, rheumatism, tumor, ulcer, varicosis.