Here’s a wonderful little tricorn flower for ye. This beauty was blooming in Icicle Gorge in May of 2013. Made the forest floor fairly pop, I can tell you.
I’ve mentioned before how much I love the flower-friendly Pacific Northwest. I especially love the way so many flowers grow happily beneath the forest canopy, so that I can photograph them even when it’s spitting rain, as it was that day.
I love how these petals have white speckles dusted around their edges, and how they ripple like pennants in a breeze.
It wasn’t alone, and as you can see, this one had got rather wetter. I love flowers in the rain. They make the rain seem rather magical.
A thought struck me as I was editing these photos: I know the age of the schist in the gorge they’re growing in. I know the history of the rocks, at least in broad strokes, from the time they were born over 200 million years ago, to when they were metamorphosed a hundred million years later, through today, when the creek cut a gorge through ’em. I wonder if we have a similar story for these flowers? When you identify them, will we discover more to their story than just their name and a few facts about their current lives? Do they have a history as ancient as the schist, or are they positive youngsters?
And do we know the stories of the other flowers we find? Or is that still knowledge waiting to be discovered?
I can’t wait for spring. We’ve seen so many treasures in these northwest forests, but there are so many more waiting to be discovered. I’m so glad evolution gave rise to flowers, and gave us a hearty appreciation for them.
Looks like trillium to me, but I’ve never seen any that color in the Cascades. The petals usually start out white and can get pinkish or even transparent as they age, but the ones here are almost purple. Definitely not the usual thing.
I’ll have to keep my eyes out the next time I’m up near Leavenworth.
Looks like a Trillium, Trillium Grandiflorum f. roseum. What it would be doing in your neck of the woods is a good question.
Oh, trillium is about as common as dirt up here, but it’s usually T. ovatum and usually white. I’ve seen references to a dwarf, pink-petaled subspecies native to Vancouver Island, but I don’t know anything else about it. There’s also a lowland species (T. chloropetalum) that can get *really* pink, but the structure of the flowers is very different from Dana’s photos, so that’s not it.
…That said, I got curious and spent a few minutes poking around on Google, and some of the local nurseries sell T. ovatum starts whose flowers age to a deep pink. I still think it’s weird, but it’s obviously not unheard of. I’ll add it to my personal list of interesting things to watch for. :)
With that input, I think the mystery may be solved. T. ovatum petals apparently turn pink as they age.
I immediately said “trillium” but was puzzled by the color. Thanks to the posters above for sorting it out.
Red trillium. They’re a thing (as pointed out above, basically same as the white but just the pink variety, though this one could also be an aging white one, it’s hard to tell in the rain!). We had deep, dark reddish ones up in Canada where I grew up, quite rare, though. I think a garden variety, I can’t remember, I just know they were around.
Same for me – Trillium, but I’ve only seen dark red ones and white ones.
Regarding cladisitc history, there are certainly studies like that for other biological groups. The latest Science News reports on just such a study of insects, which traces the origin of various modern lines. Some groups have been evolving independently for 400 million years and more, but others (such as cockroaches) are a mere 150 million years old.
No doubt there has been similar work done for flora.