Trillium Time

It’s Trillium time on the Adirondack Coast. This special springtime sub-season, ranging from mid/late April to mid May (depending on the quirks of seasonality, late winter, early spring, climate change, and inexplicable enigma) invites us to wander in the woods and along streams, dancing between filtered sunlight and mysterious shadows.

While my poppy passion is no secret to Rosslyn Redux readers, I’m less vocal about my partiality to wild flora like trillium and Jack-in-the-Pulpit. One learns to protect these treasures!

(Source: Jack-in-the-Pulpit)

And treasuring the likes of Trillium and Jack-in-the-Pulpit (Arisaema triphyllum) involves discretion — lots of discretion, even secrecy — to ensure that the whereabouts of these wonders does not inadvertently lead to their demise.

And so I tend to be a bit secretive. If I’m fortunate enough to come across these exotic specimens during Trillium time, I might snap a photo or pen a poem, but I’m unlikely to broadcast the coordinates. I hope you can understand. And I hope you get the opportunity to spend some quiet time searching a sylvan wonderland near you.

Purple Trillium (Trillium erectum) is a perennial wildflower with deep red, three-petaled flowers growing above three large green whorled leaves. It blooms in spring in the Adirondack Mountains of upstate New York. It is a member of the lily family.

(Source: Adirondacks Forever Wild)

I’ve been fortunate to come across plenty of purple and white Trillium in Rosslyn’s backlands and nearby hiking trails over the years. Sometimes the latter appear in dense drifts, and abundance of wild flora riches.

The great white trillium is an herbaceous, long-lived, woodland, perennial wildflower with a broad distribution in eastern North America. This trillium occurs on well-drained, rich, mesic soils in deciduous or mixed deciduous/coniferous forests.

(Source: U.S. Forest Service)

Trillium time is certainly an opportunity to celebrate these tri-petal beauties, but it’s also a time of anticipation. Anticipation for the full flourish of spring, to be sure. And summer soon after. But it’s also a chance to monitor your favorite trails in anticipation of the Trillium blooming.

That photo above shows a trillium just before blooming. Like the night before Christmas, gifts wrapped up beneath a decorated tree, so much excitement ready to burst. After all, anticipation is half the pleasure, and Trillium time is no exception.