White Empress

Greater White Trillium
(Trillium grandiflorum)

She appears in the woods a little later than her more vibrantly coloured red cousin, and she is just as grand with her three lush white petals, golden heart and three supporting bracts. Her petals are velvety, a little wider than those of the red trillium and opulently curving, as if she is trying to compensate for her lack of scarlet pigmentation with a paler but equally sumptuous grandeur.

No compensation is needed, for she is gorgeous on her own, and she is another of the northern wildflowers which Georgia O'Keefe would have loved to paint.

Yesterday, the woodland was carpeted with white trilliums, and the whole community was nodding vigorously in the brisk wind and early sunlight. There were late blooming red trilliums tucked in here and there, the first elegantly scalloped columbine leaves starting to appear among the rocks and I discovered ladyslipper leaves coming up near the trail which leads deep into the woods. Somewhere down that winding trail, a whole choir of grosbeaks were singing their pleasure.

Alas, there were also multitudes of black flies.