Trillium

My cousin Coni took this photo up at the Barkhamsted LightHouse site.  It’s a very beautiful flower.  I ponder if James & Molly planted these because they loved the flower or because there was a purpose or even if it was a wild flower….

So my first step was to ask my friends on Facebook if they’d ever seens this kind of flower, I got one response, they thought it looked like the wild flower called Trillium.  I went to google & looked it up.  On Wikipedia it says “Picking a trillium seriously injures the plant by preventing the leaf-like bracts from producing food for the next year. A plant takes many years to recover. For this reason in Michigan, Minnesota and New York it is illegal to pick and/or transplant trilliums from public lands without a permit from the State.”

It goes on to say “Some trilliums have a flower which is bent downward, below the leaves.” It looks like this is what these are doing, and that “In a 1918 publication, Joseph E. Meyer called it “Beth Root” (probably a corruption of “birthroot”) and claimed that an astringent tonic derived from the root was useful in controlling bleeding and diarrhea” (Meyer, Joseph E. The Herbalist and Herb Doctor. Hammond, IN: Indiana Herb Gardens, 1918, p. 50.)  It is a wildflower, but I wonder if it is natural to Connecticut?

I’m sure James knew of its medicinal uses.  What other flowers & plants are up there that can be used for healing or something else.  If you see these flowers, take a pic, admire them but don’t pick them, it could be illigal plus it will harm the plant.