_Trillium erectum_
_Flowers_--Solitary, dark, dull purple, or purplish red; rarely
greenish, white, or pinkish; on erect or slightly inclined footstalk.
Calyx of 3 spreading sepals, 1 to 1-1/2 in. long, or about length of 3
pointed, oval petals; stamens, 6; anthers longer than filaments; pistil
spreading into 3 short, recurved stigmas. _Stem:_ Stout, 8 to 16 in.
high, from tuber-like rootstock. _Leaves:_ In a whorl of 3; broadly
ovate, abruptly pointed, netted-veined. _Fruit:_ A 6-angled, ovate,
reddish berry.
_Preferred Habitat--Rich_, moist woods.
_Flowering Season_--April-June.
_Distribution_--Nova Scotia westward to Manitoba, southward to North
Carolina and Missouri.
Some weeks after the jubilant, alert robins have returned from the
South, the Purple Trillium unfurls its unattractive, carrion-scented
flower. In the variable colors found in different regions, one can
almost trace its evolution from green, white, and red to purple, which,
we are told, is the course all flowers must follow to attain to blue.
The white and pink forms, however attractive to the eye, are never more
agreeable to the nose than the reddish-purple ones. Bees and
butterflies, with delicate appreciation of color and fragrance, let the
blossom alone, since it secretes no nectar; and one would naturally
infer either that it can fertilize itself without insect aid--a theory
which closer study of its organs goes far to disprove--or that the
carrion-scent, so repellent to us, is in itself an attraction to certain
insects needful for cross-pollination. Which are they? Beetles have been
observed crawling over the flower, but without effecting any methodical
result. One inclines to accept Mr. Clarence M. Weed’s theory of special
adaptation to the common green flesh-flies (_Lucilia carnicina_), which
would naturally be attracted to a flower resembling in color and odor a
raw beefsteak of uncertain age. These little creatures, seen in every
butcher shop throughout the summer, the flower furnishes with a free
lunch of pollen in consideration of the transportation of a few grains
to another blossom. Absence of the usual floral attractions gives the
carrion flies a practical monopoly of the pollen food, which no doubt
tastes as it smells.
The Sessile-flowered Wake-Robin (_T. sessile_), whose dark purple,
purplish-red, or greenish blossom, narrower of sepal and petals than the
preceding, is seated in a whorl of three egg-shaped, sometimes blotched,
leaves, possesses a rather pleasant odor; nevertheless, it seems to have
no great attraction for insects. The stigmas, which are very large,
almost touch the anthers surrounding them; therefore the beetles which
one frequently sees crawling over them to feed on the pollen so jar
them, no doubt, as to self-fertilize the flower; but it is scarcely
probable these slow crawlers often transfer the grains from one blossom
to another. A degraded flower like this has little need of color and
perfume, one would suppose; yet it may be even now slowly perfecting its
way toward an ideal of which we see a part only complete. In deep, rich,
moist woods and thickets the sessile trillium blooms in April or May,
from Pennsylvania, Ohio, and Minnesota southward nearly to the Gulf.