Disappointment Four Years In The Making

Trilliums have been on our must have list for many years.  Giant Whites and Stinking Benjamins are well represented in our two shade gardens.  We have wanted Painted Trilliums for what seems like forever.  Despite our past habit of frequent woodland hikes, we have yet to see a natural occurrence of that beautiful flower.  We have also never seen it offered for sale.  A search taken just minutes ago did offer seeds for this plant.  We would be 84 years old before a Trillium from seed might be seen.  No order was placed.

When we first saw this bud we expected our long wait to be nearly over as this plant was sold to us as Painted trillium.  Daily visual checks were made for the past two weeks and we could barely contain our delight.

This purple colored bud is all wrong for the mostly white colored flower that we were expecting but that realization did not hit home for entirely too long.  We did order these plants four years ago.  No above ground growth appeared during their first year with us.  Pathetic is an appropriate description for the small plants that did appear over the next two years.  This year their appearance strongly suggested that our wait for a flower might be over.

 

When the realization that the petal color was all wrong we continued to wait for the typical blossom configuration of flat petals.  That has not happened and never will.  This hands over head is as open as these plants ever present.  Trillium cuneatum or Little Sweet Betsy goes about the business of pollination from this position.

 

This is the other flowering plant from the six purchased.  Each is close to another plant but that increase in number happened only as the result of underground action.  This is as close as we will ever get to having a Painted trillium.  We would happily settle for simply seeing this plant in the wild if anyone would share the location of this apparently rare treasure.