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Snow Trillium Way Back in Ohio

© Gregg Pasterick

When my wife and I pulled away from our old farmhouse in central Ohio six years ago, wildflowers were the furthest thing from my mind. And even that implies a proximity which didn't exist. But then, as spring engulfed the northern Indiana coast where we were now living, and wildflowers began to nudge aside the decaying leaf litter, a slow dawn illuminated a dark horizon.

There were lots of wildflowers up along Lake Michigan including Wild Lupine, Skunk Cabbage, and Pitcher Plant, all new sights. A year later, when spring settled in the valleys of western North Carolina and began to climb the hillsides, that illuminated horizon was suddenly bathed in the bright glare of noon.

Wildflowers! There were so many wildflowers!!

Eventually our travels took us to west coast wildflowers and Gulf coast wildflowers and prairie wildflowers and mountaintop wildflowers and somewhere in there it occurred to me there were a few things I never got to see way back in Ohio, where it all started. And chances were I never would see these things. Things like Snow Trillum (Trillium nivale), for instance.

Snow Trillium is a small, rare spring ephemeral, native to the eastern U.S., found primarily south of the glaciated areas of the Midwest. It grows in gravely, low-humus, alkaline soil; seeds will not germinate in acid soil. And it usually grows in deciduous-shady spots.

If there is a tinier species of Trillium, I've not seen it, and I've seen many. It's about one or two inches tall when the white flower opens, stretching to as much as four inches tall after it has flowered. The three leaves range in length from two-thirds of an inch to about two inches; the flower's petals are from a half to one and a half inches long. Greenish-yellow to golden pollen gathers in dust bunnies on the anthers.

It takes about four years for young plants to have their first bloom.

Because Snow Trillium bloomed at a time when I'm still mostly comatose, sucking my thumb and babbling incoherently about equinoxes and Cancun, I never even tried to find this small promise of spring. And as far as I knew, it didn't grow any further north than southern Ohio.

Good thing for me my wife and I were unceremoniously relived of our innkeeping duties on the coast of Washington. Good thing for me we decided to spend a little time in Ohio before our next innkeeping gig got started. Good thing for both of us we got to see snow Trillium for the first time because otherwise we might have gnawed off a few limbs for the sheer misery of Ohio in late winter and early spring. (What on Earth were we thinking?)