Wildflower Wednesday: Sweet Betsy Time in the Woodland Garden

I love Trillium cuneatum and revel in its spring emergence every year. It's been years since I showcased this beauty and I think it's a perfect little Wildflower Wednesday star.

It was one of the first native plants that I discovered when we moved here many years ago. Long time readers might remember that I built this garden around the native beauties I found all over the wooded edges of my yard. Sweet Betsy was hiding in the wayback backyard under the oak trees and I transplanted it to my new woodland garden. I remember carefully digging around it to get all the rhizome and roots and gently placing it in the garden. They survived and thrived despite my gardening ignorance.

Trillium cuneatum typically flowers from early March to mid April. It can be found in rich, mostly upland woods, but, it is especially happy growing on Middle Tennessee's Ordovician limestone soils (neutral to basic soil).  Trillium will be happy in your garden, if you give it a rich, moist soil, shade, protect it from browsing critters and keep aggressive perennials from crowding it. They can live for a long time and usually do not flower until they are several years old. It's found growing across Alabama, Georgia, Illinois, Kentucky, Maryland, Mississippi, North Carolina, Pennsylvania, South Carolina, Tennessee and Virginia. Sweet Betsy is a great selection for your shade garden. Plants are hardy, drought-resistant (although they prefer moist soil), somewhat deer proof, and extremely long-lived.

Trilliums used to be a part of the Liliaceae family, but were recently moved to the family Melanthiaceae or. bunchflower family. 

 

There are over 50 species found worldwide with 18 calling Tennessee home.

Despite being known as Little Sweet Betsy it's the largest of the eastern sessile Trilliums, sometimes topping out at 15 inches tall.  In case you wondered, sessile means stalkless and what appears as a stem is actually an extension of the horizontal rhizome. The leaves, petals and sepals of all Trilliums come in groups of three. The three large, leaf-like bracts are typically mottled or striped, and has a single flower with three petals. The flower color can vary, but it is often maroon.

 Flowers have a sweet but faint fragrance (some say reminiscent of bananas), hence the common name of sweet Betsy. 

Ants collect and disperse the seeds of Trillium spp. They're attracted to the elaiosome, which is a large, lipid-rich structure attached to the seeds. The ant dispersal process is known as Myrmecochory. The ants take the seeds to their nest, where they eat the elaiosomes and put the seeds in their garbage (midden), where they "can be protected" until they germinate. Yellow jackets are also seed disperses. Sweet Betsy depends upon myrmecochory for survival.

It will be years before this one flowers

Sweet Betsy is attractive to bees, moths, pollinators and small mammals. When they say attractive to mammals, they mean small critters that like to eat the rhizomes. Voles decimated my collection a few years ago. How can I blame that sweet little rodent! I was looking for the Trilliums and found little tunnels under the leaf mulch. I did replace the plants and carefully planted them in a mixture of soil with shale, then covered them with a wire basket. It's working-so far!

Sweet Betsy is abloom and dancing with the Spring ephemerals in our local natural areas. Middle Tennesseans put on your hiking gear and head to one of our many parks. Davidson county residents, we are lucky folks to have fabulous Metro Parks nearby (Warner Parks, Shelby Bottoms, Beaman Natural Area are but a few). 

Closer to home, Sweet Betsy (Trillium cuneatum) can be seen in remnant woodlands  all over my neighborhood (and many others in Nashville). As long as our bee friendly yards aren't herbicided or replaced with non native monocultural lawns our native wildflowers~  Spring Beauties, Rue Anemone, Trout-lily, False Garlic, Blue-eyed Grass, Wild Sweet William and Sweet Betsy, will never disappear and will continue to delight us with their spring arrival. 

 

Trilliums are one of the most familiar and loved of the spring woodland wildflowers.

But, you don't have to take my word for it~Just check out Trails and Trilliums April 4-6th, 2025 in Beersheba Springs, TN. You can attend talks, hike and buy wildflowers. But hurry up registration closes March 30th.

xoxogail

The Particulars

Botanical Name: Trillium cuneatum
Common Name: Sweet Betsy, Little Sweet Betsy, whip-poor-will flower, large toadshade, purple toadshade, and bloody butcher 

Type: Herbaceous perennial

Family: Melanthiacea, Little Sweet Betsy falls within the sessile group
Flowering: flowers from early March to mid April. Showy, fragrant

Native Range: Southeastern United States

Zone: 5 to 8

Size: 1.00 to 1.50 feet tall and will spread to 1 foot

Bloom: Maroon to yellow to orange to reddish-green

Sun: Part shade to full shade

Water: Medium

Maintenance: Low

Foliage: Colorful

Characteristics: All Trillium species used to belong to the belong to the Liliaceae (lily) family,  but are now in their own family the Melanthiacea. They're are rhizomatous herbs with unbranched stems. Trillium plants produce no true leaves or stems above ground. The “stem” is just an extension of the horizontal rhizome and produces tiny, scale like leaves (cataphylls). (source)

Pollinators: produces pollen, but, I have never seen its pollinators! Beetles and other insects pollinate the flowers, attracted to their sweet scent.

seedhead

Propagation: Ants collect and disperse the seeds of Trillium spp. They're attracted to the elaiosome, which is a large, lipid-rich structure attached to the seeds. The ant dispersal process is known as Myrmecochory.  The ants take the seeds to their nest, where they eat the elaiosomes and put the seeds in their garbage (midden), where they can be protected until they germinate. Yellow jackets are also seed disperses. Sweet Betsy depends upon ants for survival.

Wildlife value: Host plant for larvae of black-patched clepsis moth (Clepsis melaleucanus) and American angle shades moth (Euplexia benesimilis)
Comments: Never pick flowers or leaves, you will lose your plant. Each plant in the genus Trillium features three leaves in a terminal whorl. A single flower emerges on a stem which is either peduncled (on a stalk) or sessile (stalk absent). Trillium cuneatum is a sessile form. Can be browsed by deer and roots and rhizomes can be eaten by voles. (trust me they do get eaten)

 

 

 Welcome to Clay and Limestone's Wildflower Wednesday celebration. On the fourth Wednesday of each month I share information about wildflowers and other native plants. Please join in if you like. You can write a blog post or share your favorite wildflower on social media. Remember, it doesn't matter if they are in bloom or not, and, it doesn't matter if we all share the same plants. It's all about celebrating wildflowers.

 

 

Gail Eichelberger is a gardener, Tennessee Naturalist and nature writer in Middle Tennessee. She loves wildflowers and native plants and thoroughly enjoys writing about the ones she grows at Clay and Limestone. She reminds all that the words and images are the property of the author and cannot be used without written permission.