During my walk on Friday, I spotted several of these beautiful dark red flowers, rising above 3 broad leaves. I was so excited; I'd never seen trillium before in my spring tramps through the woods. It may be that I generally took my alternate walk during this season and the growing conditions a mere quarter mile away weren't ideal for this flower. But here they were, many of them, nodding their gracious heads, growing on the eastern facing side of a stone wall, which runs along an ancient town road.
When I first saw this grouping of leaves, much larger than the others in the area, I thought it might be a larger white form, but now I see the flowers are opening to red.
Along the same wall is this beautiful little plant, with a thin stalk ending in flowing slender leaves and an elegant tubular flower with outcurved petals. My nearest guess is that this is a bellwort, though my wildflower book says it's yellow; to me it looks cream, almost white. As you can see in the photo below, they are a happy companion to trillium, and their contrasting colors and shapes make a beautiful display.
Yup, that's bellwort -- Uvularia sessilifolia. And "yellow" isn't very nuanced, is it? Gleason & Cronquist says "tep pale stramineous" =
ReplyDeletetepals (sepals and petals that look alike, as these do) pale straw-colored. I think that's closer. Very graceful plants.
You get my award for first trillium sighting. They are magical. Love you last photo. That pleated leaf plant is false hellevore, very poisonous to cows and sheep, causing deformity in offspring. Some of the leaves are chewed...bears?
ReplyDeleteNIce trillium sighting outdoors. It makes you a trilliumaire!
ReplyDeleteCoincidence: Saturday I did a painting of my wheelbarrow on a piece of bluestone harvested from my streambed. Photographed the process and place multiple times and put it up on my FaceBook. Later I realized it's symbolic of carting the painted concrete sculpture I just finished (actually the auto-body shop just spray finished) over hill and dale to the old barn where 56 variations of Rip VanWinkle are being collected for their launch in our Catskill hamlets this summer. Whew! Sorry this is long winded, but I invite everyone to the Northern Catskill towns this summer to see a bit of local, sometimes mundane, sometimes transcendent, kitsch. Google Rip Lives!
Thanks for the confirmation on bellwort, Susan; it's nice to know the name of things. Also the name of a plant with large pleated leaves that I see in spring and never knew what it was till Maggie named it: thanks! I do feel like a trilliumaire having seen such rich flowers. (and what a fun project, Kim, with old Rip van Winkle.)
ReplyDeleteThat top photo of the red trillium is really spectacular.
ReplyDeleteTotal eye candy!
ReplyDeleteAren't those flowers amazing?! It's hard to take a bad photo with such a striking flower.
ReplyDeleteI think you have solved a puzzle. One spring morning in 1975 (!) I found a single little flower, pale, almost transparent, in the lower part of our rather wild Pennsylvania garden in the woods. It seemed to have no base leaves but had a bell shaped flower like the one in your photo. Quite enchanting. When I went back later it was gone - either eaten or shriveled. Never seen one since and nobody believed me anyway.
ReplyDeleteLinda in LA again.