Flora Pittsburghensis

Author: Father Pitt

Great White Trillium (Trillium grandiflorum) Fading to Pink

Photographed May 12.

As Great White Trilliums age, they tend to take on rosy hues. We should all age so gracefully. This is what some of the trilliums on the Trillium Trail looked like in the middle of May, late in their season.

Gray describes the genus and the species:

TRÍLLIUM L. WAKE ROBIN. BIRTHROOT. Sepals 3, lanceolate, spreading, herbaceous, persistent. Petals 3, larger, withering in age. Stamens б; anthers linear, on short filaments, adnate. Styles awl-shaped or slender, spreading or recurved above, persistent, stigmatic down the inner side. Seeds ovate, horizontal, several in each cell. — Low perennial herbs, with a stout and simple stem rising from a short and praemorse tuber-like rootstock, bearing at the summit a whorl of 3 ample, commonly broadly ovate, more or less ribbed but netted-veined leaves, and a terminal large flower; in spring. (Name from tree, three; all the parts being in threes.) — Monstrosities are not rare with the calyx and sometimes petals changed to leaves, or the parts of the flower increased in number.

T. grandiflorum (Michx.) Salisb. Leaves less broadly rhombic-ovate; pedicel erect or ascending; petals oblanceolate, often broadly so (4-6 cm. long), white turning rose-color or marked with green; stamens with stout filaments (persistently green about the fruit) and anthers, exceeding the very slender erect or suberect and somewhat coherent stigmas; fruit subglobose. Rich woods, w. Que. and w. Vt. to Minn., Mo., and N. C.

May 14, 2022
Celandine Poppy (Stylophorum diphyllum)

Photographed May 12.

More pictures of this bright yellow woodland poppy, which was blooming in great profusion at the south end of the Trillium Trail in Fox Chapel.

We repeat our earlier article on this species:

Like a larger version of the Celandine, this bright yellow poppy blooms at the same time, but is easily distinguished by its larger flowers with overlapping petals and bright orange stamens. These plants were blooming at the beginning of May along the Trillium Trail in Fox Chapel.

Gray describes the genus and the species:

STYLOPHORUM Nutt. CELANDINE POPPY. Sepals 2, hairy. Petals 4. Style distinct, columnar; stigma 2-4-lobed. Pods bristly, 2-4-valved to the base. Seeds conspicuously crested. — Perennial low herbs, with stems naked below and oppositely 2-leaved, or sometimes 1-3-leaved, and umbellately 1-few-flowered at the summit; the flower-buds and the pods nodding. Leaves pinnately parted or divided. Juice yellow. (Fromstylos, style, and pherein, to bear, one of the distinctive characters.)

S. diphyllum (Michx.) Nutt. Leaves pale beneath, smoothish, deeply pinnatifid into бог 7 oblong sinuate-lobed divisions, and the root-leaves often with a pair of small distinct leaflets; peduncles equaling the petioles; flower deep yellow (5 cm. broad); stigmas 3 or 4; pod ovoid. —Damp woods, w. Pa. to Wisc., “Mo.,” and Tenn. May. —Foliage and flower resembling Celandine.

May 14, 2022
Dwarf Larkspur (Delphinium tricorne)

Not a common plant around here, but locally abundant. The shockingly blue flowers and palmate leaves are distinctive: nothing else remotely like these Larkspurs is blooming in early spring. These plants were part of a large colony in the woods near Mayview State Hospital, where they were blooming in April. The pictures were taken on film in the year 2000, and sat forgotten in a box of slides until recently.

Gray describes the genus and the species:

DELPHÍNIUM [Tourn] L. LARKSPUR. Sepals 5, irregular, petal-like ; the upper one prolonged into a spur at the base. Petals 4 (rarely only 2, united into one), irregular, the upper pair continued backward into long spurs which are inclosed in the spur of the calyx, the lower pair with short claws. Pistils 1-5, forming many-seeded pods in fruit. — Leaves palmately divided or cut. Flowers in terminal racemes. (Name from Delphin, in allusion to the shape of the flower, which is sometimes not unlike the classical figures of the dolphin.)

D. tricórne Michx. (DWARF L.) Root a tuberous cluster; stem simple, 1.5-9 dm. high; leaves deeply 5-parted, their divisions unequally 3-5-cleft; the lobes linear, acutish; raceme few-flowered, loose; flowers bright blue, sometimes white, occasionally numerous; spur straightish, ascending; pods strongly diverging. — W. Pa. to Minn., Neb., and southw. Apr., May.

May 1, 2022
Bluebells in All Colors

Photographed April 29.

Every year we go looking for different colors of Virginia Bluebells (Mertensia virginica). We even include some blue ones in this collection.

April 29, 2022
Persian Speedwell (Veronica persica)

Photographed April 13.

Persian Speedwell is one of our earliest and most beautiful spring flowers. It is so tiny and so ubiquitous, however, that it passes unnoticed even when it lights up our lawns with sky-blue flowers. The blooming period begins in March, or even late February, and is generously long. These flowers were blooming in the middle of April.

Since Gray did not describe this species, which had not taken firm hold here in his time, we repeat our own description. The flowers of the Persian Speedwell have yellow centers, fading to white veined with blue, the blue predominating toward the outer edges of the petals, and giving the overall impression of a blue flower from a short distance. The leaves are roundish, sessile near the top of the stem and on short petioles below, gently toothed, somewhat hairy. The plant seldom exceeds the height of a few inches, and can often pass unmolested under a lawnmower blade.

Veronica was placed in the family Scrophulariaceae until recently; like most of our members of that family, it is now placed in Plantaginaceae.

April 14, 2022