Los Gatos Weekly-Times

Photograph by George Sakkestad

Arturs Reinvalds says this volunteer plant's identity is a mystery, but during the last week in May, as it has been doing for 30 years, it developed enormous blooms that lasted just three days.

Los Gatos plant rooted in mystery

By Shari Kaplan

Its flowers last for just three days a year, but when Arturs Reinvalds' "mystery plant" bursts into bloom, it is not at all modest in announcing its presence.

According to Reinvalds, who settled in Los Gatos from his native Latvia about 50 years ago, his late wife noticed an unassuming little plant springing from the grounds of their Shellburne Way home, from which they were moving. Reinvalds dug it up and planted it in the yard of his University Avenue home, where it has flourished for more than 30 years.

Living beneath the dappled sunlight of a large orange tree, the plant has broad green leaves and sturdy stems that look and feel akin to a smooth-skinned snake.

Although it dies away every winter, Reinvalds says the plant begins a period of rapid growth every spring in which, he says, "it looks like a monster coming out of the ground." Although this behavior could resemble that of bulb plants, Reinvalds does not think it is a bulb, based upon how the root system looked when he dug it up decades ago.

Consistently, the plant blooms in May or June for about three days with showy, deep purplish-red flowers about two feet long. When the flowers first open, he says, they smell like manure and attract hordes of flies. By the second day, their distinctive aroma is gone.

"All these years, whenever anyone comes over, I show it to people and always ask, but no one knows," Reinvalds says. Ivory-colored seeds the size of small grapes form near the bottom of the flowers after they close, he adds.

Reinvalds has even sent photos to his gardener goddaughter, but she cannot identify the plant.

A former journalist and photographer in Latvia and Germany and now editor of a locally published Latvian magazine, 91-year-old Reinvalds still possesses the curiosity that kept him pursuing stories many years ago.

"I don't know about agriculture, but maybe someone would know. Maybe this is a very important plant that can be used for medicine. I don't know, but I would like to find out," he says.