Wednesday Walk: Trillium Walk

I was gardening today and during a quick break for lunch I remembered that it's Wednesday and time for WednesdayWalk(!) I have been wanting to walk over to the nearby bush (forest) to see if there were any trilliums out because it felt like trillium season. Trilliums, the provincial floor of Ontario, Canada, come out for a few weeks every spring somewhere between my daffodil and tulip seasons, and my sole tulip, the one I call my "squirrel flower" had just opened.

I don't usually leave the house in my gardening clothes but I was just going to take a quick walk there and back with my camera. I love this time of year. I walked up the street and although the tree leaves aren't completely out, they are well on their way.

As I walked by the mailboxes... oh, good, they fixed it. Ground that freezes and thaws every year wreaks havoc on brick work and roads. It had caused a hole by the mailboxes that you could break an ankle in.

Everything is so green. It is about 5 weeks since the snow left.

I passed by a neighbour's tulips.

Most of the lawns are covered in dandelions now. That's what should be our provincial flower!

I bet I have taken this photo 100 times and in every season. I made a sharp left where I knew I was most likely to see trilliums, if they were there.

Will there be trilliums or not? (I suppose I give it away when I name the post "Trillium Walk" lol.)

Can you see them in the distance? Look straight ahead.

They seem to favour this area of dappled sunlight.

Three petals, three sepals, three leaves and a three-sectioned seedpod. In fact, that's where the tri part of their name is from. Trilliums are a protected flower. We are discouraged from picking them because the flower will die if it is picked below the leaves (which is where you would pick them if you wanted a nice bouquet).

You find them growing in small colonies like this. These are white trilliums that will gradually turn pink as they age. Altogether, there are five native trillium species, members of the Liliaceae family, in Ontario; the white trillium, red trillium, painted trillium, drooping trillium, and nodding trillium. The white ones are the most common here. I can probably count the number of times I have seen the smaller red ones and I have never seen the other two.