From the work of Bierzychudek and others, it has been shown that jack-in-the-pulpit (and other species of Arisaema) are sex-switchers; sex is determined in any season according to resource availability, generally with larger plants becoming female. If fruit production (by "females") depletes resources over a number of years, plants can switch back to being males, then change in another year to being female as carbon stores accumulate. . In our jack-in-the-pulpit species, there is no particular threshhold size where they change sex - i.e. there may be much overlap in size between males and females, but larger plants still are most likely going to be female. So it is not so much about leaf number, as about photosynthetic area, and that those plants with a single leaf, if they are flowering at all, are likely only to have adequate resources to express themselves as males. On the ticks: I don't know about long-term trends in Maine, but wetter years have typically given rise to more ticks, in my experience. Loraine +++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++ At 10:02 AM 5/27/2003 -0400, you wrote: Greetings, A member of my wildflower class brought to my attention a discrepancy in the literature I gave out about the sex life of the Jack-in-the-Pulpit. In a write up from Marilyn Mollicone to JBS, 1992, she states that the male Jacks have two leaves and the females one leaf as a rule. In another article (Paulette Bierzychudek, Natural History Magazine, 1982) it is stated that the males have one leaf and the females two. So, being the curious botanist, I went into my own garden (yes, ideal growing conditions for all my Jacks for years) and found that they all have two leaves and that there are 3 males, 9 females, and several single leaves with no inflorescence. Please shed some professional light on this quandary and reply to all of us. Many thanks, Susan