Description
This is a lovely vigorous stock making good-sized, white flowers (larger than T. grandiflorum usually) which have broad, slightly recurving petals. This lovely Asian Trillium is slightly fragrant and has a very characteristic purple spot on the ovary, typical of this species and unique to Trillium camschatcense (though a similar mark can sometimes be evident in some specimens of the N. American Trillium flexipes).
This is the showiest of the Asian Trillium for garden use and Trillium camschatcense and its very close relatives are the largest. The species is widespread across N. Japan and several of the more northerly Japanese Islands and one the Russian peninsula of Kamchatka. Though it is not well-documented, it also occurs on the Chinese mainland in Jilin province and it is also said according to “Flora of China” to occur in Korea.
This is cultivated stock is raised from material traceable to Chinese populations growing in Jilin province near Yanbian. It is not quite as large as the very largest of the Japanese forms, but is still large, very vigorous and garden-worthy and given the complex evolutionary nature of the Japanese Trillium including this species, it may perhaps be something a little distinct. In this vein, we have noticed that some of the flowers in this stock have purple anther connectives, something which we have never seen in Japanese specimens of this species. It is many years since we had enough of this documented Chinese material to offer.
First introduced to our lists December 2004
