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Sunday, April 29, 2012

A Most Unusual Trillium

   On Saturday afternoon I headed out to Green Hill Park to revisit the magic spot Jeff and I found two weeks ago. I wanted to see if the False Solomon's Seal was blooming yet, and to look for new stuff we might have missed the first time. Needless to say, my heart skipped a beat when I found this! All of the other Trilliums in this patch of forest had long since finished blooming, in fact, not much was in bloom at all so if you were looking for wildflowers like I was, this gem was easy to spot. Researching it on the internet turned up little more than it's likely a mutation of a Trillium grandiflorum, which is the predominant Trillium in these woods. Unfortunately they are also considered a "Holy Grail" among some unscrupulous wildflower enthusiasts and therefore are a favorite of poachers. Well, I ain't tellin' anybody where I found it, jes' in case!

I'm curious just how common or rare these might be, have you ever seen one?

I found it in a "wash" area, a slight gully where water washes down in heavy rain

The coloring was white tinged with green and pink, beautiful!

Here's the area where I found it, I love this place! Notice all the cool plants? 

5 comments:

  1. Best of all, however, is that you are out of your cast, off crutches and out scrambling hillsides and working in your own garden:)

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  2. It is a very beautiful flower and congratulations on finding it.

    And great news about being out of the cast!

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  3. Wow, neat find! I wonder what the pollinators think of that :)

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  4. A double...
    I would definitely put that one in the propagation bed... If it set seed, I would plant them all!

    I would practice rhizome wounding on the other trilliums until I felt confident enough to attempt it on the double (probably not for a decade or longer)!

    I've seen double trilliums offered rarely by white flower farms, and they want a pretty penny...

    I've got a 5 leaf trillium in one of my gardens, but it doesn't seem to be typical for the plant, as the additional stems are the expected three-leaf... One wonders whether extra stems on your trillium will be also doubles.

    It may not produce seeds... http://www.ottawahort.org/doubletrillium.htm

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  5. Yowzah! You'll have to keep an eye on that one! Great find!

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