Nature Notes
Trip To England, Scotland Reveals Thriving Trillium Species
By Patricia Martin

Trish Martin is a year-around resident of Mackinac Island, has earned a master's degree in botany from Central Michigan University, and owns Bogan Lane Inn.

Spring is one of my favorite seasons on Mackinac, as the woods come alive with shortlived ephemeral flowers. Flowers like spring beauty, trout lily, toothwort, a variety of species of violets, and liverleaf, or mayflower, all brighten the drab brown and gray of the woods before the leaves of trees pop out. But probably the spring flower that people most admire, and one of the most abundant, is the large-flowered trillium (Trillium grandiflorum). These large, showy white flowers cover much of the forest floor under beech, maple, and other hardwoods, as well as in mixed forests, as long as the soil is rich, well drained, and sub-acidic to neutral. These flowers are easy to identify with their singular, three-petaled, tubular flower (each petal can be up to 2.5 inches) surrounded by three-pointed sepals held on an erect flower stalk above a whorl of three, large broad leaves. As Fred Case, a native Michigander, wrote in his book "Trillium," "This species, the most showy, best known, and loved of all the trilliums, is the provincial flower of Ontario, Canada, and in European gardens, one of the most highly prized woodland or shade flowers. No other trillium can match this species' abundance and flowering spectacle..."

This is a beautiful, large clump of the small trillium, brook wake-robin (T. rivale), taken at Kew.

I love trillium, and on a recent trip to Scotland and England, I was delighted to find others who share an appreciation for these plants. While staying with a friend in Carmonock, outside of Glasgow (she lived on Mackinac years ago), I was introduced to a neighbor of hers who, as it happened, was a retired horticulturalist. He invited me over to see his two-acre garden, and lo and behold, he had a wonderful collection of trillium. I was a bit surprised, as trillium are not native to Europe. In fact, five or six species of trillium are natively found in eastern Asia, about seven in western North America, and the rest, about 35, occur natively in eastern North America. The reason I use the word "about," when discussing the number of species in each location, is that there is not, nor ever has been, agreement among botanists about how many species of trillium exist.

This western white trillium (T. ovatum) was blooming in early April in Kew Garden, London.

Besides the large-flowered trillium, this Scottish horticulturalist had several West Coast species that I had never seen before, including western white trillium (T. ovatum). This plant is similar to our large-flowered trillium but the petals are narrower and don't overlap, and it's not as winter hardy as the large-flowered trillium. The leaves of the western white trillium are a medium green, but they have blotches or spots of dark green, or maroon in one variety.

In general, botanists divide trillium into two groups, ones like our large-flowered trillium and the western white trillium, whose flowers are held on flower stalks or pedicels, and those whose flowers are connected directly to the whorl of leaves, and are referred to as being sessile. My new horticultural friend from Scotland also had some specimens of the second group. One of them was giant trillium (T. chloropetalum). This handsome plant can be quite large (up to several feet in height) and often generally has mottled leaves in dark brown/green, which are stockless. The petals are erect, do not spread outward, and can be found in a variety of colors, from white to greenish white, to purplish dark red. These flowers are a native of California and are naturally found on the edges of the redwood forests, stream flats, in deciduous wood, and openwooded slopes and areas where the soils are usually moist.

It was fascinating to talk to this trillium enthusiast who, as it turns out, knows author Fred Case, who I mentioned above. When I spoke to him about Mackinac, he was intrigued with the idea of no cars, and wondered if I could ship him some of our good compost made from Mackinac's horse manure. He also shared with me his experience as a youth, driving teams of Clydesdale horses, hauling steel plates for ship building along the River Clyde.

His garden was not the only place where I ran into trillium in the U.K. While in Edinburgh, I went to the Royal Botanic Garden, and it has a collection of trillium and other North American wild flowers. Upon leaving Scotland, I went down to London, where I visited Kew Garden. Kew has a marvelous variety of habitats and collections, which just happened to include trillium.

At Kew, one species of trillium that I found particularly charming is the brook wakerobin (T. rivale). According to Mr. Case, these are "Easily one of the most charming and beautiful of trilliums." It is native to the Siskiyou Mountains, southwest Oregon, and the Klamath Mountains in California. It's a small, pedicled trillium with white, sometimes pink, petals that are occasionally spotted with dark purple. They grow natively under yellow pine, and as their scientific name suggests, along rivers, streams, and riverlets. In cultivation, this diminutive trillium can form enormous clumps of 50 or more plants, as I saw at Kew, and as Mr. Case reported in Scotland.

One of the joys of traveling is that you never know what you will come across. I was delighted to find on my trip people who enjoy plants as much as I do, to learn more about old friends like the trillium, and in my case, to experience spring a couple of times. Yet, still it's fun to come home, where this week the queen of all the trillium, the large-flowered trillium, has just begun to coat the forest floor with its shower of white petals. Get out to the woods, and enjoy what people in the U.K. can only imagine.