Description
If you have seen something labelled as Trillium sessile in a botanic garden then it is probable that you what you have actually been looking at is Trillium cuneatum (though it could perhaps have been chloropetalum or kurabayashi)! The purple-brown, stemless-flowered Trillium are very badly confused in horticulture and older literature, even by the most erudite of authorities.
Trillium cuneatum has deep oxblood and red-brown stemless (sessile means stemless) flowers which face upwards, over beautifully bottle-green and silver-mottled leaves. The flower shade and leaf colouring is variable in all of the stemless-flowered Trillium though.
This takes to garden conditions very well and makes its sinister “toadshades” regularly, once established. As with all Trillium, this is a plant for the patient gardener. Trillium need a year or more to establish roots to sup[port comparatively lush foliage even when moved as flowering-sized rhizomes. Give them time, be patient, don’t poke them with a finger or dig them up to see how they are doing (this resets the establishment-clock to zero) and they will, in time, make a magnificent display.
