Wildflower Wednesday: Asarum canadense

Welcome to Clay and Limestone where we're celebrating our Wildflower Wednesday star of the month!

Asarum canadense is poking out of the soil in my garden. The heart/kidney shaped leaves are velvety soft and an attractive deep green.

The delicate bell shaped flowers are also up, but, hidden beneath the leaves at the base of the plants.

Wild ginger is found in rich, moist forests in Eastern N. America - Manitoba to New Brunswick, south to N. Carolina and west to Kansas. It's an early bloomer here in middle Tennessee and the delicate bells shaped flowers are already beckoning pollinators. In cooler climates look for them in early April.

The flower of Wild Ginger is a fuzzy little beauty, but, you'll have to get on your hands and knees to see it. The flower has no fragrance, but, it's unusual shape should be seen up close to appreciate. What looks like petals are really part of the calyx and have pointy ends that add to its attractiveness. The flowers fade fast, but, the leaves are green all season, making Wild Ginger an important ingredient for a woodland garden.

Asarum canadence is made for the shade. It’s a beautiful ground covering wildflower when grown in loose, rich, organic soil (spreads by rhizomes). Needless to say, it doesn’t spread wildly or fast in my heavy clay soil, instead it intermingles with other wildflowers. Because it remains green all season, it's a lovely addition to any woodland/shade garden that emphasizes leaf shapes, textures and variations on greens. I can see it planted along a path edge, massed or interplanted with clumping  Christmas Ferns, or any number of other shade dwelling beauties. In my garden it plays well with False dragonhead, Phlox divaricata, Christmas Ferns, Blue eyed Mary, Phacelia and Spigelia.

Wild ginger is a fuzzy little beauty, but you'll have to get on your hands and knees to see it.

When a flower is at ground level it only makes sense that it's inviting ground dwelling insects to either pollinate or disperse its seeds. That's the case with Wild Ginger, it's pollinated by flies and beetles and the seeds are attractive to ants.

Seed dispersal by ants is called Myrmecochory. This beneficial partnership between ants and plants is amazing: The ant gets a lipid (fat) rich meal from the elaiosome covered seeds and the plants benefit from the ant dispersing the seed far from the parent plant (thereby eliminating competition). Scientists also think that ants have a role in protecting seeds from seed predators when they carry the seeds away and by increasing germination rates when they eliminate the elaiosome surrounding the seed.

Nature never ceases to amaze me.

I love knowing that ants have moved wild ginger uphill in my garden. I sure didn't recall planting it there! This gives me an even better appreciation of ants, their midens (trash depositories) and their place in nature! I must thank them for planting it near the Christmas fern and wild Phlox!

Oh, in case you wondered, the leaves and rhizomes of Wild Ginger do give off a pleasant gingery fragrance when broken, but, this is not why I grow it. Not only is it lovely to look at, it's not palatable to deer and it's an important food source for the larva of the Pipevine Swallowtail Butterfly. The caterpillar eats the leaves and thereby ingests aristolochic acid which makes it poisonous to birds.

Pipevine Swallowtail on Ruellia strepens

The particulars

Asarum canadense
Common Name: Wild Ginger
Family: Aristolochiaceae
Type: Herbaceous perennial
Family: Aristolochiaceae
Native Range: Eastern N. America - Manitoba to New Brunswick, south to N. Carolina and west to Kansas
Zone: 4 to 6
Size: Height: 0.50 to 1.00 feet and Spread: 1.00 to 1.50 feet
Bloom Time: Late March/April to May
Bloom Description: Maroon/brown
Water Use: Medium
Light Requirement: Part Shade , Shade
Soil Moisture: Moist (can take some dryness, but, it will fade fast in a drought)
Soil pH: Acidic (pH<6.8) , Circumneutral (pH 6.8-7.2)
Sun: Part shade to full shade
Maintenance: Low
Suggested Use: Ground Cover, Naturalize, Rain Garden
Tolerate: Deer, Heavy Shade
Faunal Associations: The reddish brown flowers  attract flies and beetles. The seeds attract ants because of their fleshy appendages; these insects help to disperse the seeds.
***an important food source for the Pipevine swallowtail Butterfly.
Comments: Doesn't grow in the high summer heat of Zone 8.
Companion planting: This plant is a wonderful companion for most wildflowers that like moist soil Consider using them with Wild columbine/Aquilegia canadensis, Celandine poppy/Stylophorum diphyllum, Christmas Fern/Polystichum acrostichoides, Lady Fern/Athyrium filix-femina,
Woodland Phlox (Phlox divaricata, Indian pink/Spigelia marilandica, Carex species, Fothergilla gardenii, Uvularia sessilifolia, Jeffersonia diphylla, Maianthemum stellatum, Polystichum acrostichoides, Pachysandra procumbens and other woodland wildflowers.

xoxogail

Welcome to Wildflower Wednesday and thank you for stopping by to see our March star. It's been in my garden for a long time and once again I ask myself how this workhouse in the woodland got overlooked. Thanks for joining in and if you are new to Wildflower Wednesday, it's about sharing and celebrating wildflowers from all over this great big, beautiful world. Join us on the fourth Wednesday of each month. Remember, it doesn't matter if your wildflower is in bloom or not and, it doesn't matter if we all share the same plants. Please leave a comment when you add your url to Mr Linky.




Gail Eichelberger is a gardener and therapist 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.

Wildflower Wednesday: Trillium cuneatum

My garden has taken a beating the last two winters and it wasn't from the weather. It's been decimated by voles. Native wildflowers have disappeared. Gone are Trilliums, Erythronium albidum (white trout lily), Hepatica, Dicentra cucullaria (Dutchman’s breeches), Camassias and several other ephemeral beauties.

Trillium cuneatum was one of the first native plants that I discovered when we moved here, so it was the first on my list to be replaced. The garden wouldn't be the same without that dramatic mottled foliage and those twirling sessile flowers!

Old stands of native ephemerals are precious and impossible to replace in a season

Finding replacement plants was not easy. Long time readers know buying local is important to me, but, when I couldn't find it at my favorite native plant nurseries, I had to go on the internet. Luckily, I found Trilliums for sale at Cottage Lake Gardens in Washington state. Susan Egan, the owner, shipped them bare root, wrapped in moss and ready to be planted. I couldn't be happier.

planted and mulched in shale and covered with a wire basket to protect from marauding squirrels

It's extremely frustrating to discover that a healthy practice I advocate~using leaf mold to mulch wildflowers~ was the very one that made it easy for voles to feast on the plant crowns, roots, and bulbs/rhizomes. I found their shallow runs when I pulled the mulch away to look for emerging plants. I was heartbroken to see depressions in the soil where my beautiful spring ephemerals ought to have been. Of course I did a mad search to see what other gardens were using to deter voles. I decided to use expanded shale/PermaTill in the bottom of the hole and also as a mulch. Voles have been described as a cross between a mouse and a mole. They're about five inches long and covered in brownish fur. The mole part of them makes them great diggers, but, they are supposed to dislike the rough shale and thus avoid the protected plants. I will let you know how well it works.

Not my garden

What better way to celebrate Trillium cuneatum's return to the garden, than to make it the star of March Wildflower Wednesday.

 Sweet Betsy can still be seen in remnant woodlands all over my neighborhood. Sixty or so years ago roads were bulldozed through farmland and forests west of Nashville to build one of the city's first planned communities for the growing post war population. Our little bit of the neighborhood with its shallow soil and exposed limestone bedrock had never been farmed, but, had been logged; what you see now is secondary growth with a few untouched areas in the hills and ridges surrounding us. The indigenous wildflowers~ False Soloman's Seal, Spring Beauties, Rue Anemone, Trout-lily, False Garlic, Blue-eyed Grass, Wild Sweet William and Sweet Betsy, have never  disappeared from roadsides and wooded lots. Each spring they delight residents with their arrival.

dark maroon sessile flowers above three broad mottled leaves

Long time readers might remember that I built this garden around those native beauties. The first spring in the house, I found Sweet Betsy in the wayback backyard and 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.

It will be years before this one flowers

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). The two I transplanted multiplied to many. Trillium will be happy in your garden, if you give it a rich, moist soil, in 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.

seeds waiting to ripen and be harvested

It might be a few years before the new Trilliums will bloom, but this morning, I saw Trillium seedlings poking up. It looks like the ants did a great job on dispersing seeds before the voles ate the parent plants! Trillium is making a comeback! Hokey smokes, you know I was dancing in the garden.

Trillium cuneatum

Common Name: whip-poor-will flowerlarge 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

Pollinators: produces pollen, but, I have never seen its pollinators! I assume Hymenoptera insects, including honey bees, bumblebees, and wasps visit the plant.
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.
Wildlife: Can be browsed by deer and roots and rhizomes can be eaten by voles.
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. It's the plant of the year at the Georgia Native Plant Society!

**You can search the internet for more information about controlling these little rodent thugs. I ask only that you never, ever, ever, use poisons to kill them! You don't want any roaming critters to eat a poisoned vole.

Happy Wildflower Wednesday,
xoxogail

PS MR LINKY ISN'T LETTING YOUR THUMBNAILS SHOW, BUT, I WILL FIX IT LATER. YOUR LINKS ARE FINE.  I AM ON GIGI DUTY RIGHT NOW.

Welcome to Clay and Limestone's wildflower celebration. Wildflower Wednesday is about sharing and celebrating wildflowers from all over this great big, beautiful world. Join us on the fourth Wednesday of each month. If you want to share a story about a dormant native wildflower, please do, after all, winter is a long season.  Please leave a comment when you add your url to Mr Linky.



Gail Eichelberger is a gardener and therapist 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.

Sometimes, it's the little things in a garden

That make me happy...

 Like how much Bumbles like lavender.

Carpenter Bee visiting 'Senorita Rosalita'®

That sterile flowers like 'Senorita Rosalita'® can produce some nectar, or,

 how much I like a big burnished orange-gold daylily.

But, yesterday topped even those delights when I found seed pods on Trillium cuneatum, one of my favorite Clay and Limestone endemic ephemerals.  It's gratifying to know that the conditions were perfect for these plants to do their thing~Flower, reproduce and along the way provide food for critters and enjoyment for the gardener.

earlier this spring Trillium cuneatum flower is ready for pollination by fruit flies

Much earlier this Spring, on a warm and moist evening, the flowers of Sweet Betsy opened and emitted a sweet fragrance reminiscent of fermented fruits. The flower stayed opened for several days to attract pollinating fruit flies.

It worked! In a few weeks the pod will ripen and the weakened and decaying stem will topple over, the pod will split open and the ants and other critters* will arrive to feast on the fleshy elaiosome that covers each seed.  Some will be eaten in place but, a few seeds will be carried to the nest where the left over seed will be dumped in their trash heap. This garbage rich midden is a good growing medium where trillium offspring might germinate.

Trillium cuneatum offspring starts with a single leaf

I don't know about you, but, I love the idea of ants having a compost heap! That's another little thing that makes me happy.

xxoogail

* Trillium are one of many woodland plants whose seeds are dispersed by ants and other critters. This process is called myrmecochory.  Try using that one in a sentence today!

Often the the work of researchers goes unrecognized or uncredited. Please  check out this study on other critters that aid in trillium seed disbursement.

Gail Eichelberger is a gardener and therapist 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.