Field of Science

Friday Fabulous Flower

Our weather for the first week in April has been fairly warm, so now flowering shrubs and spring ephemerals are at the earlier end of their flowering range.  Unfortunately this means some woodland spring flowers don't last very long.  According to TPP's data base, there are seven species of Trillium that flower in our gardens.  The earliest flowering if the aptly names snow trillium; it's also the smallest and hardest to find locally.  This is another fairly early flowering trillium, T. cuneatum, often called Sweet Betsy. Don't know why.  The leaves are the mottled type and the flower is termed sessile. in that there is no stalk, pedicel, below the flower. The dark maroon flowers stand several cm above the whorl of three leaves.  There is a Trillium sessile that is similar but smaller all the way around.  Not sure why we don't have one.  

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

Dearest Phactor,

the Scilla still sneaks in!

Great photo - thanks for posting.

regards
BrianO