Photographed in April
of 2001.Photographed in April
of 2001.
Photographed April 28.
The most common form is deep brown or mahogany red, but Pittsburgh seems to favor trillia in the wrong colors, and we have many in the more uncommon pale-green form. It is distinguished by its erect petals and often by mottled leaves, as we see here. It favors sites near streams; some of these were growing beside Saw Mill Run in Seldom Seen.
Since the big breakup of the family Liliaceae, the genus Trillium is now placed in the family Melanthiaceae. The older grouping is used on this site to correspond better with the references that deal with this region. Gray describes the genus and the species:
TRÍLLIUM L. WAKE ROBIN. BIRTHROOT. Sepals 3, lanceolate, spreading, herbaceous, persistent. Petals 3, larger, withering in age. Stamens б; anthers linear, on short filaments, adnate. Styles awl-shaped or slender, spreading or recurved above, persistent, stigmatic down the inner side. Seeds ovate, horizontal, several in each cell. — Low perennial herbs, with a stout and simple stem rising from a short and praemorse tuber-like rootstock, bearing at the summit a whorl of 3 ample, commonly broadly ovate, more or less ribbed but netted-veined leaves, and a terminal large flower; in spring. (Name from tree, three; all the parts being in threes.) — Monstrosities are not rare with the calyx and sometimes petals changed to leaves, or the parts of the flower increased in number.
T. sessile L. Leaves sessile; sepals spreading; sessile petals erect-spreading, narrowly lanceolate or oblanceolate, dark and dull purple, varying to greenish; fruit globose, 1.2 cm. long. — Moist woods, Pa. to Minn, and southw.
Photographed April 20.
