Wake Trillium! Wake Robin! Wake All You Small Creatures, Too!

There are small creatures to thank for the flourishing of March’s plant of the month. Just like there are small creatures to thank for all flourishing, including your own.

For western trillium (Trillium ovatum), blooming now in bold white on dark forest ground, we have ants to thank. Specifically the American winter ant (Prenolepis imapris), named for their capability for continued industry during cold temperatures that drive other ants to seek shelter.

 

 

Here’s their story:

The long rays of late winter light shine through canopy openings, alerting underground rhizomes to waken—the gentlest alarm clock.

Green leaves enveloping a single flower bud rise to meet the season, spearing up through leafy duff.

A sprinkle of rain freshens the unfurling.

Soon, three broad leaves open around a single stem. This generously egg-shaped foliage is acknowledged by the specific epithet ovatum.

Resting like a new tongue in a chicks yawning beak, the bloom nods on a short stalk above the leaves.

 

 

Three slender green sepals alternate like a pinwheel below three pure white petals, centered by six butter yellow stamens. The flowers are sunlight transported to the forest floor atop stalks standing fully upright now, awakening robins to the season.

 

 

Wake robin, wake!

And bumble bees, moths, and beetles, too. For while robin sings in tree tops, these others quietly pollinate trillium’s flowers below.

White petals tint pink, then maroon, informing insects that the pollen is gone, and announcing to you that spring is progressing, shifting, changing.

A green, berry-like pod grows from successful pollination. Inside wait seeds with an extra gift.

And here is where the magic of tiny, but muscular ants comes in.

Each trillium seed has a fleshy elaiosome packed with proteins and fats, an offering to the ants.

Why? Unlike other seeds that can hitchhike with burs, or fly in the bellies of birds, or on wind lifted by their own feathery fluff, trillium cannot send their young far without the help of ants.

Ants, who are attracted by the offering, come marching to carry the elaisome-laden seeds home to feed their own developing young.

After the feast is devoured, they tidy up like all diligent parents do, moving the leftover trillium seeds to their refuse pile.

A compost pile of sorts, this is the perfect medium to sprout and grow into a new shining trillium.

The ants depend on trilliums as much as trilliums depend upon the ants.

This is how community works. In the microcosm as in in the macrocosm.

A gift economy is a thing of thriving resilience.

The poet Mary Oliver wrote “All summations have a beginning, all effect has a story, all kindness begins with the sown seed.”

 

 

What a kindness to welcome both trilliums and ants into your shady garden.

Small plants from the local nursery tucked into humus-y ground, partnered with Pacific waterleaf, maidenhair fern, candy flower, will grow slowly.

Trilliums are long-lived, taking their time to flower and expand.

Trust them to return every spring.

The gardener, the ant, and the trillium embody trust, community, and an adherence to the beauty of nature. I believe these are the qualities that will carry us through the darkness brewing in the world.

Be bright trilliums erupting through with your gifts, your offerings, for your whole community, seen and unseen.