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.  

Friday Fabulous Flower - Bloodroot

 When the bloodroot flowers, a true native wildflower, they are quite the display; the bright white perianth contrasts nicely with the surrounding leaf litter.  Our local species is the only one, Sanguinaria canadensis, The rhizome oozes a bright red-orange latex, colored latexes are a common feature of the poppy family, and in olden times people thought that looking like blood indicated it was good for treating blood ailments.  Curiously TPP's favorite plants the nutmeg family also produce red latex, and is used in preparing  a hallucinogenic snuff.  At any rate this is a most cheerful little flower.  For many years our garden only had one clump of bloodroot but then if began showing up all over the place.  A leaf wraps around each flower bud.  

Friday fabulous flower - yellow green

Our dry, warm weather has really begun to push along the spring flowering shrubs, such that we are almost caught up to the calendar.  Woodland plants in the deeper shade are still behind schedule.  Two of TPP's last Trilliums are just now in flower, the big white T. grandiflora and the much less grand T. luteum.  However, the subtlety of the latter is kind of nice, all those nice shades of green growing there in the rather deep shade.  Even the yellow petals are partly green, and you can see the green mottling on the leaves.  Rather a slow grower it seems.  TPP is rather uncertain about whether this species is a native here in Lincolnland, it's in Canada to our north and in states to our south and east.  So it seems strange for it not to be in IL, but TPP is no purist anyways.  Some much flashier flowers are open right now, and one might get posted if TPP has time before taking off on a trip tomorrow.  Paris in the springtime.   

Friday Fabulous Flower

It was a bit warmer yesterday, back to brisk today, but enough to give a few more of these terribly cute Iris (I. reticulata) a chance to flower.  Their flower is pretty large in comparison to the size of the plants, although the leaves will get longer and taller.  This is a species that would like being in a sunny rock garden, which TPP does not have, but in one bed this bulb-forming Iris has been happy. This is a very cheerful spring flower if you can make it happy.  In 3 or 4 other places in our gardens it has just faded away.  This species has been a FFF before, but not too many other choices right now, and if enjoyable each spring, then no problem featuring it again.

Under planted perennials & Friday Fabulous Flower - Iris reticulata

Why not double our fun by having a FFF and presenting another under planted perennial at the same time?  This will be accomplished by highlighting Iris reticulata, a species of iris that grows like a crocus.  Rather than having a rhizome, this iris has a small bulb/corm; it will form clumps, but not spread like it would with a rhizome.  So far in TPP's experience, this little iris naturalizes very well.  You plant it just like crocus, and it flowers at about the same time of year, early spring.  The long narrow leaves hang around for awhile and then it goes dormant until next spring.  Like many small bulb flowers, planting it in clusters and sprays gives you more impressive displays.  After all it's only about 10-15 cm tall at flowering.  Everyone has room for more flowers like this; they are so showy and so cheerful.  It's also relatively cheap; you can buy 100 bulbs for something like $12.  So why isn't this more commonly planted?  Can't say.  TPP has a couple of very nice images, but they're in the laptop and the home internet connection is down, again, and not to speak ill of the provider by name, but these bumskis can't possibly be the frontier of the communications network (topic of another post perhaps).  This image is from the Creative Commons and credited to Hedwig Storch.