Trillium sessile or toad trillium
I have seen hundreds of trilliums this spring and have a somewhat ambivalent relationship with them. Most of them are bashful and bend their blossoms down to the earth making them sometimes impossible to photograph. I recently learned that there are 43 known species of trillium so I shouldn’t have been surprised when I saw some different looking trilliums growing in Janie Clark’s garden. I asked Janie about her bold trilliums, and her answer resulted in this blog.
When Janie was a young mother living in Albion, Michigan, she learned that an old Victorian house nearby was going to be razed to make room for a parking lot. Janie immediately thought of the trilliums that she knew grew there. She grabbed her children, some buckets, and her trowel; and marched over to the house , carefully dug up the trilliums, and replanted them in her yard. Later, more rescued trilliums joined the pack. Janie often hiked on a trail where beautiful trilliums grew right on the path. She heard that they were going to plow the trail to widen it for hikers. You guessed it, Janie to the rescue again.
Many years later Janie and her husband Russ retired and moved from Michigan. The trillium plants rode more than 1,000 miles with them to their new home on Trillium Lane in Grantham, New Hampshire. I asked if she bought her house because of her street address given her affinity for trilliums but she told me that after looking a dozens of homes, she knew this was the one when she saw the fireplace. Russ did his Geological Science PhD dissertation on the granites of south-central New Hampshire—the same granite as the fireplace.
Call it fate or karma or coincidence, but some things are meant to be.
When Janie was a young mother living in Albion, Michigan, she learned that an old Victorian house nearby was going to be razed to make room for a parking lot. Janie immediately thought of the trilliums that she knew grew there. She grabbed her children, some buckets, and her trowel; and marched over to the house , carefully dug up the trilliums, and replanted them in her yard. Later, more rescued trilliums joined the pack. Janie often hiked on a trail where beautiful trilliums grew right on the path. She heard that they were going to plow the trail to widen it for hikers. You guessed it, Janie to the rescue again.
Many years later Janie and her husband Russ retired and moved from Michigan. The trillium plants rode more than 1,000 miles with them to their new home on Trillium Lane in Grantham, New Hampshire. I asked if she bought her house because of her street address given her affinity for trilliums but she told me that after looking a dozens of homes, she knew this was the one when she saw the fireplace. Russ did his Geological Science PhD dissertation on the granites of south-central New Hampshire—the same granite as the fireplace.
Call it fate or karma or coincidence, but some things are meant to be.
Trillium grandiflorum
Trillium luteum (Yes, it's yellow)