Prairie Trillium

Trillium recurvatum, prairie trillium, is a spring woodland perennial native to the central and eastern United States, reaching six to eighteen inches. Three mottled dark and light green bracts sit directly on the stem, and above them a stalkless maroon flower stands upright with narrow petals, its sepals sharply recurved beneath — the feature that names it.

Its seeds carry fatty appendages that ants collect and carry underground, which is how trillium colonies spread and why they take years to establish. Plants are slow and long-lived, and digging them from the wild almost always kills them, so nursery-propagated stock is the only responsible source.