White Trillium

This is what we've all been waiting for.  Nature pics!  Every day!!  At least that's the plan.

I had the opportunity recently to watch two good movies in one weekend ... "Julie and Julia" and "The Big Year".  The common thread of these two movies appeals to my obsessive nature.  They both were about someone doing something BIG throughout the year.

In the case of "Julie and Julia", a young lady; Julie, decides to cook all 524 recipes in Julia Child's "Mastering the Art of French Cooking" in one year.  She posts all of this on her blog as she goes along.  It's quite a nice film featuring Meryl Streep.

Every birder knows what "The Big Year" is about.  No need to go into that.

So, I decided to try something "Big" this year.  I plan to post pictures of a species of plant every day throughout the year.  They will all be plants from Indiana and each day will be a different species.  Given that there are over 2600 species of plants in Indiana, I won't run out of plants.  The hard part will be to get the pictures of the plants, hopefully good pics, and to say something clever about them.

I will be using common names and taxonomy from the USDA PLANTS Database.  There are a lot of different naming conventions and taxonomies, and they're constantly changing.  Botanists have a grand time messing with them and arguing about them.  Rather than trying to keep up I've just picked one and will stick with it.  If you don't like this, you should go here for an attitude adjustment. :-)

So ... here goes!


White Trillium
Trillium grandiflorum

I figured I better make the first plant something flashy, so I picked the White Trillium.

The White Trillium is easy to identify.  It can be found in lots of woodlands in Indiana in late spring.  In some cases the floor of the woods is covered with these plants.

At one point the White Trillium was under consideration to become the state flower for Indiana because the current state flower is the Peony, which is not native.  It's not unusual to change state flowers in Indiana.  Prior to the Peony, the Carnation and the Zinnia have both been state flowers at one time or another.  Apparently gardeners have more pull than botanists, because the Trillium didn't win.

In any event, the White Trillium is a beautiful springtime flower and a favorite among wildflower enthusiasts.