Thanks for all the feedback guys! All I can add after googling many images and observing my plant is that it does seem to be one of the 14 local species of Arum. Now that is narrowed down maybe I will track it down to species level, maybe with the help of the Aroid Society. Its definitely not a Spathiphyllum or Zantedeschia aethiopica. If it is any help to you the leaves are 12 cm (4.9") long and 7.5 cm (3") wide and the flower is 15 cm (6") long. I have also added two more images of the whole plant to my album, although the flower has started to wither� Thanks for looking everyboby!

thanks very much for the i.d. wanda. now the mystery is where it came from because i have never heard of it. probably it arrived in a pot with some other plant. min

Thanks! I actually figured that out today based on our discussion that it was in the Aster family, and was coming here to post for whoever took the plants. I'm pretty sure it is Aster tataricus. Now that it has been identified, if anyone wants some, let me know! ~CA

Bachelor's buttons is a common name given to quite a number of flowers, including both annual and perennial Centaurea species. A small book could probably be written on the term. You may be sorry you asked--!--but here is a lengthy but interesting quotation from "The Plant-Lore and Garden-Craft of Shakespeare", written by the very erudite Canon Henry N. Ellacombe, Oriel College, Oxford. I have a reprint of the 1884 edition. Canon Ellacombe begins with a quotation from "The Merry Wives of Windsor", referring to a young bachelor carrying "buttons". Then he quotes another authority: "...the supposed allusion is to a rustic divination by means of the flowers, carried in the pocket by men and under the apron by women, as [the flower] was supposed to retain or lose its freshness according to the good or bad success of the bearer's amatory prospects." Canon Ellacombe continues in his own words: "The true Bachelor's Button of the present day [19c] is the double Ranunculus acris, but the name is applied very loosely to almost any small double globular flowers. In Shakespeare's time [late 16c-early 17c], it was probably applied still more loosely to any flowers in bud (according to the derivation from the French 'bouton'). Button is frequently so applied by the old writers [example]...and by Shakespeare [example]. It's interesting that he doesn't mention any Centaurea at all. He was quite a gardener so he would certainly have known Centaureas. I should add that I have been searching for the double Ranunculus acris for several years. It was an extremely popular old perennial, also called Sailor's Buttons. There's an interesting thread about it on the Perennials forum. Closer to home, Alice Morse Earle, who was from Massachusetts, wrote the following in "Old Time Gardens" in 1901, also since reprinted: "[Some say the bluest flower is] Centaurea cyanus or Bachelor's Buttons, a local American name for them, which is not even a standard folk name, since there are twenty-one English plants called Bachelor's Buttons. Ragged Sailor is another American name. Corn-flower, Blue-tops, Bluebonnets, Bluebottles, Loggerheads are old English names [for Centaurea]. Queerer still is the title Break-your-spectacles. Hawdods is the oldest name of all." If you imagine a small circle of glass, shattered from the center outwards, you can envision how the name break-your-spectacles came about. Plant lore is endlessly interesting.