Trillium 2013

Beautiful plant! I got some seed for this species, along with two color forms of Trilium chloropetalum through this year's seed exchange. Hopefully they will germinate. Although the seed arrived dry, they have swollen back to good size. Keeping my fingers crossed!

Bulborum, I had to look it up, but apparently it isn't all that far away from our home. This is what I found online:

http://museum.gov.ns.ca/imagesns/html/30732.html

Peggy's Cove is a few hours drive from us, but if it is there, I would bet we could probably find it in some of our local bogs (probably found on Brier Island).

A few trilliums are starting to crank up the blooms.
-- Trillium rivale (always to first to flower)
-- Trillium ovatum
-- Trillium kurabayashii
-- Trillium chloropetalum
-- Trillium pusillum

Claire, seems your spring is well en route! Beautiful trilliums!

Wow Claire!!  :o Absolutely gorgeous! Lucky you!

I'd guess my biggest asset is where I live -- the Pacific Northwest, specifically near Puget Sound.  It doesn't get too cold or too hot. It's hard to grow fruit trees but the trilliums love it.  Most of mine grow in part shade with lots of mulch / humus.  The soil is creek bottom clay with little round rocks, so I've added lots of shreds from the arborist over a number of years to improve drainage.  They get watered in the summer and most get mulched in the winter.  Trouble comes mostly from Eastern gray squirrels who dig them up -- they try them once in while, only to spit them out! -- and rabbits that chew foliage.

Trillium cuneatum is putting on a nice show this year.  The clump was crowded and responded nicely to my dividing it into smaller clumps last summer.

The T. chloropetalum clump is now in full bloom.  The white one came out early, got frozen, and was set back.  But it seems to have recovered.  All of these plants were grown from a single packet of seeds sown in 1998 that came from the AGC-BC seed exchange.

Very nice clumps, Claire! I have only one small Trillium in bud - but it is in my greenhouse! (So even in the greenhouse it is a late spring :-\ ) Outside I can barely see just a little sign of life in my small clumps. I also have some nice pots of different seedlings sown the last couple of years. They all germinated at the same time last winter (Dec-Jan).

Claire, did you separate the seedlings or plant it in one clump?

I confess -- I plopped the whole pot of seedlings in the garden one day when I needed more room for other seed pots.  I haven't had to divide or move any of them, thank goodness.  Laziness (or desperation, in this case) luckily paid off.  :)

Those clumps are phenomenal, Claire! I am waiting to see if the T. albidum and chloropetalum seed from the seed exchange germinates. In the meantime there's a raft of Trillium luteum  and T. grandiflorum, getting established in the greenhouse. Once the temperature warms up enough, some will head out into the woodland garden, to join T. kurabayashii and T. erectum. Maybe this will be the year I can find T. undulatum in our woodlot?!

Good luck finding T. undulatum -- post pictures!  That's one trillium I killed the first year I had it.  :(

Cockcroft wrote:

I confess -- I plopped the whole pot of seedlings in the garden one day when I needed more room for other seed pots.  I haven't had to divide or move any of them, thank goodness.  Laziness (or desperation, in this case) luckily paid off.  :)

Maybe they like to be crowded?

Too much crowding is not a good thing.  Right now, along my front walk, I have large clumps of Trillium kurabayashii that are crowding out each other and everything else in the bed.  Does anyone have a recommendation on when is the best time to move most of the trilliums out?  I have a conglomeration of seeds, first-, second-, and third-year seedlings, and mature clumps.  I know, lots of people would love to have my problem.  But it can turn into a problem of virus, fungus, and who knows what else, if I don't get better air circulation around the trilliums.

So, when is the best time to move trilliums out of a planting bed?

Thank you for the advice.  I tend to move trilliums when they are in flower (right about now) -- it's good to hear from another about their experience.

T. sulcatum crossed with T. flexipes and the resulting seedlings are pretty nice, with some picotees and others more pink than maroon.  Here is one example:

Very nice, Claire!

Did you hand pollinate?  Who was the pod parent?

Hi, Rick,

No, I did not hand pollinate nor did I sow the seeds.  These "volunteered" in the garden, which was the effect I hoped for.  Unfortunately, this bed is getting quite sunny and I'm going to have to move a lot of seedlings out (somewhere?) to grow them on and see if there are more hybrids.

There might have been a discussion on this before...does anyone know if this T. erectum white form or something else?

AmyO wrote:

There might have been a discussion on this before...does anyone know if this T. erectum white form or something else?

I posted this same question on facebook and the consensus agrees that it is T. simile.

Afloden wrote:

In FNA the key separates sulcatum (which occurs in many colors) from simile by the recurved petals vs. not, or barely recurved. These are distinctly recurved which means it has to be a form of sulcatum, but just white. These are frequent in a few areas in the Ridge and Valley of Tennessee. Personally, having seen these, erectum, and simile in many populations in the field I don't see many consistent differences to separate them. In some populations you can find all three "species" in one population based on morphology and fragrance!

Thanks so much for that! It's good to now have the correct name.

I have now some nice batches of trillium seedlings (thanks to some forumists and others)! But I wonder, is it advisable to feed them well or not? And when is the best time and age to plant them out?