Trillium Virus

My earliest Trilliums are blooming in the garden - the white and dark red ones.  When I visited Marion Jarvie's garden last week, she said she has a success of Trilliums blooming between the end of April and the middle of June.  The last to bloom are the Luteums - spotted leaves and upright yellow flowers. These Trilliums are very pretty, but the stripes of green mean that they are virused.  If these plants aren't removed, the entire forest of Trilliums will eventually die of the virus.  So make sure you don't buy one of these thinking that it is an interesting variety.  It will kill the other trilliums in your garden.

Trout Lily Spring

We are lucky in Niagara to have maple forests.  Where there are maple forests there are trilliums - sometimes they carpet a mature wood.  So many beautiful little ephemerals bloom in spring and then disappear until the next year.  

This is one of the early spring bloomers - Trout Lily.  It is Erythronium americanum.  It's also known as Dogtooth Violet and Yellow Adder's Tongue.  It is in the Liliaceae family.  I didn't realize that it is an edible plant.  At the same time, it seems to be an emetic (makes you throw up), so it is not recommended that one eat a lot of it.  I guess I wouldn't add this one to the menu with guests coming.