The 14-inch-tall "flower" (35cm) is shown below:

"Flower" is in quotation marks because Elephant Ears belong to the Arum or Jack-in-the-pulpit Family, the Araceae, so what we're seeing in the last picture is a white, fingerlike spike, or "spadix," bearing hundreds of flowers partially enveloped by a white, hoodlike "spathe." The visible part of the spadix bears male flowers. Notice that the spathe constricts near its midsection, enlarging and becoming green below. That part of the spathe loosely envelops the lower part of the spadix, which bears female flowers. Eventually the white, male parts will wither away while the lower green part will expand and the spathe will be filled with the remaining bottom of the spadix bearing numerous fruits -- like corn on a cob inside its husk.

Numerous species in several genera of the Arum Family are known as Elephant Ears. This one is XANTHOSOMA SAGITTIFOLIUM. Spikes and spadices of other species are similar but in small ways different. If only leaves are present, the species is known by its large size, its all-green color -- instead of having certain purplish parts -- and by how the leaf petioles attach to their blades in the particular way shown below:

In long-established plants, leaves arise from arm-thick, pale rhizomes that run atop the ground.

from the January 8, 2012 Newsletter issued from Hacienda Chichen Resort beside Chichén Itzá Ruins, central Yucatán, MÉXICO
ELEPHANTEARS FRUITS
Several "flowers" have appeared and withered back, and they're still being issued, so this week I succumbed to the urge to cut open a "flower's" bottom compartment to see what was going on there. You'll remember that in this species the spike emerging from the spathe bears many male flowers while, below, the spathe completely wraps around the part of the spike bearing females flowers. You can see two lower compartments with the near sides cut away below:

In that picture the flowering spike, or spadix, on the right is still in the flowering stage. You can see that the upper part of the spadix bearing male flowers is different from the lower part bearing female flowers. The male items are angular columns composed of fused anthers while the lower, oval, pinkish, female things are immature stigma heads atop unseen ovaries. Below the ovaries -- that's smelly, mushlike decaying material working with maggots...

At the left is a much older flower. We'd expect to find fruits developing in it, like grains on a corncob, but its spadix also is covered with decaying, stinking, maggoty stuff.

The deal is that under natural conditions fruit and seed production in Arrowhead Elephantear is extremely rare. That's because of a circumstance known as "extreme protogyny," which means that the female flowers mature and stop being receptive to being pollinated about 20 hours before the male flowers' stamens mature enough to produce pollen. This strategy hinders self-pollination, and when you just have a couple of plants growing well apart, and usually one or the other isn't flowering, pollination becomes hard to impossible. The decaying material, then, consists of female flowers that never got pollinated, and so aborted.

If we had enough plants here for the flowers to get properly pollinated, the resulting fruits would mature 40-60 days after pollination. Fruiting heads typically bear between 200-300 berry-type fruits.

a special note from October 30, 2006, issued from Genesis Retreat at Ek Balam, Yucatán, MÉXICO
ARROWLEAF ELEPHANT EAR
One distinguishing feature of this species is that its very large leaves arise from thick, pale rhizomes, which you can see in the picture below lying horizontally on the ground, appearing from behind the sign. Most other "Elephant Ear" leaves seem to arise directly from the ground. Also, some other "Elephant Ear" leaves are of a slightly different shape or design, and most are not as large as these, which get about three feet long.

from the November 20, 2011 Newsletter issued from Hacienda Chichen Resort beside Chichén Itzá Ruins, central Yucatán, MÉXICO
MYSTERY PICTURE
At dawn I sat before the hut basking in the day's first sunbeams, vacantly gazing up at the enormous Elephant Ear leaf arching above me. I loved how the sun-drenched leaf, wet with dew, shined as with inner light, and how its raised veins cast dark shadows highlighting the veins' glow. Trying to capture the lush, fresh feeling of it all I took the photo below:

It took awhile to figure it out. Can you do it? Here's the secret:

Each light streak is associated with a dewdrop suspended from the vein beside it. Each dewdrop bends the light and refocuses it, rather like a prism, shooting it into the shadow.

Neat, huh?