Abundant beauty: Attractive and still plentiful, trillium blooms in woodlands across our region from now through May.
When locals here list reasons they like living in western Pennsylvania, the “changing seasons” are often touted. Four distinct natural phases lend interest and variety to a year lived here.
Part of the pleasure in experiencing spring, summer, fall, and winter is annual reacquaintance with natural features that appear to us in only one of those seasons. Spring delivers many of these renewals, each welcomed after winter bleakness.
Flowers, cultivated or wild, are the most anticipated of spring’s signposts. The wild ones, I think, are more inspiring, and in our part of the world, I’d argue that the trillium is the most iconic (I avoid that word because of its rampant overuse in popular culture, but it fits well here) wild spring bloom. Trillium always appears on time in early April, it’s abundant in the right habitats, and its striking flowers are hard to miss.
Several trillium species grace our woodlands but two are most common. Among those, the white trillium (Trillium grandiflorum) is by far the more abundant, while red trillium (Trillium erectum) often grows near the white species, but with less extravagance.
Both trilliums share a similar native range, from Ontario and Quebec, around the Great Lakes, across western Pennsylvania, and extending southward along the Appalachian Mountains to Georgia.
Like many woodland flowers, trillium times its bloom to that brief window when temperatures are warm enough, but before emerging tree leaves above block the sun.
Their names are straightforward. White trillium’s blooms are snow-white. That suggestion of snow can extend further because on some slopes with rich woodland soil, white trillium blooms in such dense colonies that it looks like snow on the hillside. Red trillium’s bloom is a deep, sometimes purplish red. Both plants grow to about 18 inches high, though in places where they’re heavily browsed by deer, the plants adapt by shortening their stature.
The name “trillium” reveals the most interesting and unique characteristic of these wild plants. All visible parts of the plant occur in multiples of three–hence the prefix “tri.” Three showy petals spread above three supporting sepals. Farther down, a whorl of three bracts (leaves) surrounds the stem (which, botanically speaking, is not a true stem but that’s beyond our interest). Inside the flower are six stamens, each with six sides.
If you sniff a trillium, expecting sweet fragrance from the attractive bloom, you’ll be disappointed. White trillium has no detectable scent. It depends on its visual flamboyance to attract pollinators. Red trillium has been described as smelling like, at best, a wet dog. Less generous sniffers have compared its odor to rotten meat. Carrion flies and flesh-eating beetles, though, crave the stench and gladly pollinate red trillium in return. In the past, when people paid more attention to nature around them, red trillium was sometimes known as — yes, I’ll share this — “stinking Benjamin.”
Native Americans, settlers, and rural herbalists have used trillium as medicine for centuries. A common use was to ease pain in childbirth, hence the trillium’s folk name of “birthroot.” Long ago, herbalists considered some aspect of a plant’s structure as an indication of its medicinal properties — a practice known as “doctoring by signature.” One explanation for trillium’s use as a palliative for birthing pain is that herbalists thought its stamens, clustered at the central core of the flower, resembled hair on a baby’s head emerging from the birth canal.
Trillium doesn’t like fields, lawns, or any place where it must compete with the advancing scourge of invasive plants. Its favorite haunts are wild sloping woodlands with rich, moist soil. Trout fishermen are often in places where trillium blooms above mountain streams.
Trillium’s way of dispersing its seeds is unusual. They’re not windblown, and they don’t snag in feathers or fur. Trillium depends on ants to carry the seeds for short distances away from the parent plant. Deer, often disparaged for browsing the plants, also carry trillium seeds longer distances and deposit them with their droppings. Most ecologists, though, believe the net influence of abundant deer on trilliums and other woodland herbs, like ginseng, is negative.
Thankfully, trillium remains abundant in our region. But in some places digging of the plants by humans for re-planting or sale threatens its future in the wild. Both white and red trillium are difficult to transplant successfully and, if it does “take,” can require many years to flower. Avoid even buying it because much trillium for sale was dug out of the woods. It’s best to enjoy trillium in the wild forest where it belongs.
Ohiopyle State Park is a good place to see trillium blooming in profusion. Look for it on wooded slopes or streambanks from now until late May. The blooms of white trillium turn pink toward the end of their season, but they’re most impressive, and easiest to find, now and throughout April while in their prime.
Ben Moyer is a member of the Pennsylvania Outdoor Writers Association and the Outdoor Writers Association of America.