I found them on a bank while on a walk this morning.
Walking on the Wild Side
Don't think so, Daisy. Foliage is different and these have more petals.
In for lunch. Looks like rue anemones Daisy. Pretty. Ours are blooming in the woods too.
No Daisy, those are not Spring Beauties. I think Laurel is correct with her assessment. Pretty little things! A Spring Beauty has thin, almost succulent foliage and grows from a tiny bulb (sort of). They grow close to the ground and might even be overlooked.
SB's are trilliums - Trillium erectum. (No comment)
Thanks for the id, everyone...rue anemone. Sounds like something from medieval times.
If they are wild they are protected by the government.
It's illegal to harvest or cut or transplant in New York State
Harvest? Why would you harvest something like that? You could not get rid of it even if it is on your own property. That is INsane. Good Grief:
Trillium erectum or T. pendulum, perennial, smooth herb, has an erect stem of from 10 to 15 inches in height, bearing three leaves, broad, almost rhomboid, and drooping white flowers, terminal and solitary. Grows in the rich soil of damp and shady woodlands, flowering in May and June.
The official description of the rhizome is 'oblique, globular, oblong or obconical, truncate below., terminated by a small bud surrounded by a sheath of scarious leaf bases annulated by leaf scars and fissured by stem scars. It is from 0.6 to 5 cm. in length, and from 0.6 to 3.5 cm. in width, more or less compressed laterally, rootlet scars in several concentrie rows on the underside in the upper portions. Externally yellowish to reddish brown; internally of a pale yellow; fracture somewhat uneven with a more or less spongy appearance. Odour distinct; taste bitter and acrid, with a sensation of warmth in the throat, and when chewed causing an increased flow of saliva. Trillium yields not more than 5 per cent. of ash.'
The drug is one of those prepared by the Shakers.
---Constituents---There have been found in it volatile and fixed oils, tannic acid, saponin, a glucoside resembling convallamarin, an acid crystalline principle coloured brown tinged with purple by sulphuric acid, and light green with sulphuric acid and potassium dichromate, gum, resin, and much starch.
The fluid extract is an ingredient in Compound Elixir of Viburnum Opulus.
Professor E. S. Wayne isolated the active principle, calling it Trilline, but the preparation sold under that name has no medicinal value, while the Trilline of Professor Wayne has not been used.
---Medicinal Action and Uses---Is said to have been in use among the aborigines and early settlers of North America. It is antiseptic, astringent and tonic expectorant, being used principally in haemorrhages, to promote parturition, and externally, usually in the form of a poultice, as a local irritant in skin diseases, or to restrain gangrene.
The leaves, boiled in lard, are sometimes applied to ulcers and tumours.
The roots may be boiled in milk, when they are helpful in diarrhoea and dysentery.
---Dosages---Of powdered root, a drachm three times a day. Of fluid extract, 30 minims, as astringent and tonic expectorant. Trilline, 2 to 4 grains.
---Other Species---Most of the genus Trillium have medicinal properties, especially T. erythrocarpum, T. grandiflorum, T. sessile, and T. nivale.
The acrid species are useful in fevers and chronic affections of the air-passages. Merely smelling the freshly-exposed surface of the red Beth roots will check bleeding from the nose.
This message was edited May 2, 2008 3:12 PM
They may stink a little but they sure are pretty. Lots of people buy 'em for their own native gardens.
Schickenlady: that beautiful trillium in your garden would have some of the fancier native gardeners around here drooling. When I go to Trade Secrets, they're selling cultivated trilliums for big money...I bet that gorgeous version of yours would fetch $20 a plant.
Is everyone on the board familiar w/ Trade Secrets in Kent, CT, May 17th? Gardener Heaven
I haven't heard of it before. I'm jealous of you New Englanders: you seem to have tons of native plant resources right nearby. Western New York is a virtual wasteland by comparison. :-/
Ok I just walked back out there in the rain to look. There is 14 or so plants that I could see. What are they rhizomes or a seed? Should I try to cultivate them? If so I have to start by knowing what they really are. Is the real name Trillium erectum or does it have some other type of funky name other than stinking benjamin. If I could grow these little buggers and sell them I would.
Even if you don't dig up the plants & sell them, you could turn quite a few nice trades by collecting the seed & offering them here, I'm sure. I for one would be highly interested. :-D
Here's the Trade Secrets website:
http://www.tradesecretsct.com/
Here's Heronswood's $16.00 trillium and it's only white (but beautiful).
TRILLIUM ERECTA... AKA wakerobin, red and purple. Grows in woodland edges prefers filtered sunlight. This one spotted near home after I just yesterday said I had never seen one. Today I sent a friend to photograph it. He reported that the deer had taken it to the ground.
Now I have seen one. This was it. It is no more.
Sorry to report the writer in this instance is absolutely wrong. Our mountains have been literally denuded of trillium by non other than the over populated white tailed deer. I have personally seen them brouse trillium near our hunting cabin's front porch.
Where deer are hungry and over populated they will eat nearly anything they can browse including mountain laurel which is another plant they are sometimes reported to not brouse.
Any North Central Pennsylvania naturalist or wild life protector will verifiy this report.
Deer don't frequent government sites.
PS.........."any" is likely to broad a term. The newer members of the clan are not the good solid all around naturalists the old timers used to be. I keep forgetting that! Sad but true.
Doc, that trillium is the most beautiful stand I've ever seen in ANY color. Wow!
Al, hope to see your picture #4 in bloom. If the flowers are blue/purple it's probably Pointed Blue-eyed Grass (Sisyrinchium angustifolium). It's in the Iris family. Ours is blooming throughout the woods and pastures now. I tried to take a picture, but the flowers look white in my photos. Will upload if I can (with a badly colored flower). Thanks again for all th great photos. You make my Spring go on and on!
Laurel
Laurel...........Our mountains thirty years ago had open canopies and few deer. Trillium of the white variety were in great number this time of the early spring. It was a beautiful site.
I stated just yesterday that I had never seen a red one and that was true.
No sooner had I posted that when the phone rang. Would I like to see a dandy red? I grabbed the camera to go shooting that trillium. A lurker living some five miles from my home showed me that beautiful plant. Overnight the deer took it out as wittnessed by a friend who went to photograph it today.
While our deer herd is being managed down to much lower numbers we in the surburban edges of the mountains still have way to many deer. They eat us out of house and home.
Today we have mature and closed canopies, in our mountains, with little filtered sunlight and still maybe to many deer. Even if all the deer were managed properly the forest floor is not right for trillium today. What we see are conditions that are right in the edges which are largely surburban now or massive cuts for highways and utility rights. It is along these cuts and open space that we would expect to still see trillium not in our big mountains.
Docgipe - you've said it all better than I ever could. We are living the same thing. Unfortunately, we have way too many car/deer collisions up this way to help cull the herds.
Dwaine,
You, Lynn and I are singing the same song (only I cant sing worth a toot). We have plenty of deer, plenty of poachers and still have lots of trillium. Maybe we should not be so angry about the poachers. We take venison whenever friends offer.
Laurel
Our reduced herds of deer....greatly reduced and the cost of gasoline have largely stopped recreational poaching. The good 'ole boys who have lived on it, sold it and brought their families into that red neck life style will continue poaching no matter what. Our mountains are much to large to effectively police. Deer reductions have been the factor that most believe has stopped most poaching activity. The red neckers consider it the honor of the clan or God given responsibility to out wit the authorities. It's us against them is not hear say.....it is a life style of the real mountain boys......all over the Northeast and likely anyplace else there are big mountains.
I'd really rather the hunters get them instead of chronic wasting disease. This is what happens when nature gets out of control. We used to be a rural, farming community that has been "discovered" and made into a bedroom community serving NYC. The deer have no where to go and end up browsing not just the forest understory, but the plantings up close to the houses. Bringing their ticks with them.
- Lynn
A few years ago the local paper had one of those "100 Years Ago" articles, where they reprint an event from their archives from a hundred years ago. This one had to do with the sighting around Rhinebeck of the "rare white tail deer". The article made it sound like seeing a deer was something only the old-timers could recall hearing about from their parents.
Now I have a daily herd that comes practically up to windows. A "poacher" could sit at my breakfast table and bag a daily deer while eating his Wheaties by pointing a gun out the window between bites.
It's nature completely out of balance, and like Lynn, I am very concerned w/ Chronic Wasting Disease--it could either jump the species into other animals (like my pugs who love to eat their poop) or, start showing up in the people who eat the venison.
And CWD is related to Mad Cow Disease, it's a prion and nobody quite understands how those work.
Cronic Wasting Disease has been discovered in Pennsylvania but not in great numbers. The deer are kissers and lickers of their family groups which further causes concern. If a hunter harvests less than a healthy deer he or she can get a new permit by simply showing the questionable animal to our game commissioners.
About white tails being scarce in the days gone by. My dad hunted every year up to age sixty. In all those years the talk by the winter fires was the one he saw. He finally managed to harvest one deer in all of his years.
By the time I was in college the race was on. The mountains were fairly open with great habitat and ample undergrowth. To see a dozen in two different herds was not unusual from 1970 - 2000. The management from 2000 to the present has been an attempt to end up with no more than one deer per acre on good habitat. This has not been a successful effort as of this time.
We all know what needs to be done but to harvest them in surburban quarters is not a people friendly activity. We still have Bamby lovers feeding them in their back yards in spite of feeding being legally discouraged. At my age I have determined that gardening may have to cease. I have an equal dislike for surburban fences which is the only preventive move that works.
I have been a hunter all my life. It really concerns me that so many neighbors and friends do not see the scope of unmanaged herds. Surely no-one has all of the right answers but somehow the herds must be diminished. Hunting in surburban areas by rank and file hunters is not the answer. To many people and to little open covers in the mountains is the right observation.
Wasting Disease may be nature's way ugly as it sounds. As far as we know it does not transfer to other animals in this area. I do not know about the other area large game animals like Elk and Moose.
We have a terrible problem with deer in all the city parks and suburbs,but the worst is Durand Eastman which has a highway thru it that commuters take because it cuts off going thru the city to get from west to east and viseversa.
Many deer car accidents led to a plea for humane removal of part of the herd of over thirty.
I am a tree hugger but any humane person seeing these animals with wasted forms and matted coats would be moved to agree to the Archery removal of these animals.
When the furore quited down and archers got a few animals they wrote a newspaper article with pictures of the pale pinkish yellow bone marrow.
I think there is a thinning out to this day but it's kept underground so the public won't object as much.
Dwaine and Daisy, you both have given very good assessments of the deer herds and the problems associated with them. There is a lot of concern about the fragmented (due to development) forests and the browsing of the foreset understory. Native plants which were numerous here cannot be found any longer and those that mange to survive, end up with the flowers being nipped off before setting seed. You can see exactly how high the deer can reach just by where the growth begins on the trees and shrubs. To my knowledge, they do not eat the honeysuckle, skunk cabbage or ferns. I have given up most of my gardening Dwain, because I just can't see spending a fortune on sprays or other deterrents. And fencing doesn't do it for me either. I content myself with containers that can be placed on the deck or patio, but must watch that none of them end up too close to the grass. This winter, I lost half of a potted Japanese Umbrella Pine to a bold deer who came right up on the patio for a midnight snack.
Our problem with them is the does birth twins and, on occasion, triplets. You cannot discharge a firearm within 500 feet of a dwelling. They have a virtual smorgasbord of tasty landscaped lawns. And there are few natural predators to take down the numbers.
When we moved here 25 years ago, seeing a deer was special. Seeing or hearing the Canada Geese was special. (Robins actually migrated in the autumn!)
YOU BET.................we have really screwed up the countryside. Wish I knew the answers. More preditors if we could live with them may be part of the picture. Unfortunately those preditors consider dogs and cats gormet settings. The car insurance companies wish they had an answer too.
I understand the 500 foot thing too but most governing fathers have outlawed shooting in their lands for any reason under surburban management. I would be fined in no time flat if my neighbors would cause me to be detained from the little management I can carry out that positively helps my little half acre. I understand the common need for such law. I never bring pink elephants under my management plan.
We have an overpopulation of bear too. That is entirely another story. The game commission traps them and moves them to the mountains hoping they will hang around for our bear hunting season. It takes a bear about two weeks to get back home from a fifty mile move....if it does not find better food than all the bird seed in our back yards. Our law now is that if a bird feeder attracts bears and if neighbors report it we are warned and told to remove the bird feeders. It's a limp unenforced situation. We still have bear feeders until someone raises a legal report. Maybe then warnings go out. It depends on social status somewhat.
We have had tagged or marked NY state bear in our area as you have likewise had seen or unseen PA bear in your back yards. Sometimes we just do not understand but that much movement is fact.
It's big news when bears enter our area, but it seems to be happening more frequently. We take down the bird feeders as soon as the snow is gone and it is evident they can find food. It's bad enough that the deer are attracted to the feeders! Wen they start climbing the stairs onto the deck to drink from the hummingbird feeder, I'm throwing in the towel!
We have 2 acres, Dwaine, with the back acre wooded. There are steep hills across from us and the creek runs along the back. Perfect for all kinds of wildlife (including teenagers)! Despite my problems with the deer, the squirrels are another pest. They will start harvesting the new growth on the elm trees soon. When that happens, the deer come around and feed on the fallen young branches. I think they have a co-op.
Edited to add: We just had a visit from our first hummingbird of the season!
This message was edited May 3, 2008 12:17 PM
Great points on the deer. They were scarce in the area 100 years ago. We need more predators or some economically feasible birth control program.
We actually have some predators around here. At night I hear the wierd kai-ai-ing of the coyote, and there is a fox den down by our stream and once, my husband and were standing at the bedroom window with our coffee when something enormous, cat-like, low-slung with a long tail slinked across the stone bridge across our stream in the dawn light. Our jaws dropped to the ground: catamount? Bob cat? Told the guys at the Agway and they didn't seem surprised in the least, they suspect its a bob cat, and said at least once a month a farmer comes in saying the same thing.
In anyway, we have predators and still have more deer than you can shake a stick at.
Are you rural enough to do a deer fence, Daisy?
Yep, this is why coyotes are coming into urban areas now (and the northeast, where they never lived before). Coyotes also chomp on dogs & cats. If our choice is between exotic coyotes and native wolves, I say bring back the wolves. You just can't let your pets (or young kids) roam free any more in that kind of scenario, though.
Victor, do you mean around the perimeter of the property? Probably, but it would cost a fortune; I"m gardening about 5 acres here, and there's another 5 that's wild/water/field. And then there is the issue of what to do about a gate across the driveway, also known as "Deer Alley." It's a long drive lined with maples that were planted by the people who lived here after the Civil War. It is a pretty sight, that allee of trees, and any kind of gate would just ruin the plain, rural, authentic country effect.
Jsorens, I am so worried about the pugs that we really don't let them run without one of us outside keeping an eye out. It is really a concern. And its not just the coyotes, either. When the littlest one was a puppy, she was out playing in the front yard (with me) and I just happened to catch sight of the biggest darn hawk up in the top of our Norway Spruce eyeing her very hungrily. I snatched that puppy and ran inside!