Snow Trillium Report from Our Members Stan and Karen Lockwood

Snow Trillium Report from our members Stan and Karen Lockwood dated Saturday Mar 19, 2011

I get pretty excited about Snow Trillium. Maybe it's just because of first flowers when anticipating Spring. Pass this on to others you know that might like to know. Today we went to John Bryan.

Last year I reported that we saw a lot more Snow Trillium there than I had ever seen before. I've been going a lot of years. This year they had multiplied. We easily saw well more than 1000. Where?

For orientation, let me define some trails: 1st there is the trail on the north side of the gorge that goes through the ODNR State Nature Preserve, the west end of which ends at a foot bridge #1 that crosses over to the south side gorge trail. Without crossing, you can continue west on north side gorge trail to foot bridge #2 where you can cross over to south side gorge trail, and loop back east to bridge #1 and return to the ODNR trail.

The ODNR trail, which I think is one of the best spring ephemeral shows around, only had the usual few Snow Trilliums. At this early date, the only other thing today was as usual, one of the best Hepatica shows I know of.

The next section of the north gorge trail between bridge #1 and bridge #2, has always been not very exciting, except for one area of Snow Trillium that is less than 100 yards west of bridge #1. In this location, on both sides of the trail for about 10 yards, there have been maybe 300 to 400 plants for quite a few years. I have been calling this the mother load of Snow Trillium. Last year it was the best ever. This year it was a little better.

The real surprise was the south side gorge trail between bridge #1 and #2. Last year there were quite a few more than I had ever seen before, maybe 150.

This year, had I counted, I wouldn't be surprised if we saw 1000. They occurred probably on over 50% of this trail. There were numerous patches of over 100.

This is the new mother load! (signed) Stan & Karen Lockwood ( [email protected] )