There is a wildflower that virtually laughs at the snow, and
what a fitting name it has – snow trillium. It is not unusual
during an early warm spring in our general region for them to be
in full bloom before the end of March, and practically always
before the middle of April. They are far from common in
Wisconsin being listed as a threatened species.
The fact that they bloom so early in spring leads them to be
easily overlooked. My guess is that they would be found more in
this area if only people would get out and look for them.
Ordinarily a person doesn’t consider going into a woods to search
for spring wildflowers before the end of March. Don’t be
surprised to find them blooming through the snow. It is truly a
spring ephemeral that thrives in cool growing conditions. Eastern
counties of our state, including Brown, Calumet, Manitowoc and
Outagamie, are its preferred range. Most plants are immediately
south of the glaciated areas of the Midwest.
Wooded limestone hillsides where the forest cover is mainly
sugar maple, basswood, American beech and red oak appear to be
its favored sites. These diminutive plants are even known to
inhabit gravelly, low humus, alkaline soils where the leaf litter
is not too thick. In fact we were able to avoid stepping on them
by simply walking on the fairly large, flat, low stones within
the colony.
What’s different about the snow trillium, comparing it to
their much larger relative, the large-flowered trillium, is that
its above-ground parts wither and disappear by July or August.
By the way, even though you may see bulbs of several kinds of
trilliums for sale in gardening catalogs, they don’t grow from
bulbs but rather from rhizomes, an underground stem which tends
to grow a few inches down and parallel with the ground surface.
Fred Case, one of our country’s leading trillium experts,
claims that snow trilliums have a fairly strong sweet fragrance
on bright warm sunny days that attracts small native bees,
non-native houseflies and other small flies. He compares its
fragrance to that of the arctic primrose. Now I will have good
reason to get my nose close to some arctic primroses within the
next few weeks, something I’ve never tried before.
For many years I’ve been hoping to see some snow trilliums,
Trillium nivale (ni-VAY-lee). meaning snowy, in
anthesis (an-THEE-sis) or at the very peak of their blossoming
stage. Friends told of some in Manitowoc County in the vicinity
of the Maribel Caves and also in Brown County. It was in a
seldom-hiked and fairly steep-sloped public woods in Brown County
that we finally were lead to our reward.
Nowhere in the literature describing snow trilliums, also
called early and dwarf trilliums, was their unusual inconspicuous
nature mentioned. Small yes, but downright difficult to locate,
no. I strongly suspect that photos of these dainty and tiny
wildflowers appearing in books have been somewhat "cleaned
up" making the specimens being pictured to stand out against
the mat of last year’s dried hardwood tree leaves.
We would have easily walked right past the first scattered
patch of a few dozen plants had not our two leaders hinted that
we stop walking, not take another step and look carefully around
us. There they were, barely nudging their way through last
years’ accumulation of mostly dried sugar maple leaves. From
that point on, we carefully inspected the ground ahead of each
footstep for fear that we’d accidentally step on one of those
precious plants.
I’ll never forget what one of our friends and great plant
experts, Ray Schulenberg, curator of the plant herbarium at
Morton Arboretum in Lisle, Illinois for many years, said when
leading a group of us hikers through the flowering prairie. His
appropriate advice was, "Put your feet down as rarely as
possible!" From that point on, whenever we’re hiking in a
woods, we’ve tried to follow his sound advice.
A rich woods with some clearings on fairly steep north-facing
slopes, often near outcroppings of limestone, is precisely where
we found them. In our excitement we forgot to look more closely
to see what other hints of different wildflowers were there. One
species that we do recall seeing was the trout lily.
Added to their earliness, the snow trillium’s habit of
blooming while still snuggled next to last year’s tree leaves
makes them doubly challenging to locate. How I wish more people
would hike in the woods during April. Chances are good that the
range of these very special wildflowers would be more extensive
and northward than previously expected.
My mother always referred to the large-flowered trilliums as
wake robins. She said that she learned that name as a child and
was taught that their appearance prompted the robins to sing –
they would "wake" the robins. I really feel that the
delicate little snow trillium, nearly as white as the snow
through which it must sometimes force its way upward to the late
March sunshine that is gradually melting the last of the snow in
the leafless woods, would be far better suited for the tile of
wake robin.
Resolve here and now that, come next late March or early
April, you will locate what you think is a suitable environment
for the snow trillium and go exploring. May Lady Luck be with
you!
Few wildflowers bloom as early as the snow trillium.
This column appeared in the Door County Advocate
on 05/08/2004.
© Copyright 2004 Roy Lukes. All rights reserved.
