Persistent Wakerobin

Listed as a U.S. endangered species, Trillium persistens has appeared as such on a postage stamp. The species is very rare and known only from an approximately four-square-mile area at the head of Tallulah Gorge in Georgia and South Carolina.

Rhizomes horizontal to erect, short, praemorse. Scapes 1–2, round in cross section, 2–3 dm, slender, glabrous. Bracts horizontal to drooping distally, sessile; blade 3–5-veined, ovate-lanceolate to lanceolate, 3–8.5+ × 1.5–3.5 cm, adaxial surface faintly glossy, rarely with ± 2 mm, winged, petiolelike base, apex acuminate. Flower opening above bracts; sepals spreading, green, elliptic to narrowly ovate, 11–22 × 5–6 mm, thin-textured, margins entire, apex acute; petals erect proximally, spreading distally, white, fading to deep pink with inverted V-shaped basal portion remaining white, veins not engraved, linear-elliptic to occasionally linear, 2–3.5 × 0.5–1 cm, thin-textured, margins undulate at least in distal portion, apex acute; stamens prominent, erect to divergent, straight, 9–14 mm; filaments ± equaling anthers; anthers straight, yellow or white, dehiscence introrse; connective barely longer than anther sacs; ovary white or greenish white, obovate, very sharply 6-angled, 2.5–6 mm; style 2–6 mm; stigmas erect, slightly divergent at tip, delicate, not lobed, shortly connate basally, uniformly thin; pedicel erect or slightly leaning, 1–3 cm, 1/4–1/2 bract length at anthesis. Fruits baccate, greenish white, 6-angled, pulpy, not juicy.

Ga., S.C.

Flowering spring (early Mar--mid Apr).

Humus soils in mixed deciduous-pine woodlands, along stream flats and at edges of Rhododendron thickets, occasionally in open Vaccinium-filled clearings; of conservation concern; 50m.

Trillium persistens, the persistent trillium, is a North American species of flowering plants in the genus Trillium of family Melanthiaceae (formerly Trilliaceae). The plant is also called the persistent wakerobin.

Persistent trillium is an endangered herbaceous perennial plant that grows to a height of 20–30 cm, with three leaves in a whorl near the top of the stem just below the flower; each leaf is broad lanceolate, 3–9 cm long and 1.5–3.5 cm broad. The white flower has three petals, each petal 2–3.5 cm long and 0.5–1 cm broad.

This plant has a limited range in parts of the United States in the northeastern Georgia and northwestern South Carolina.