Bashful trillium (๐๐ณ๐ช๐ญ๐ญ๐ช๐ถ๐ฎ ๐ค๐ข๐ต๐ฆ๐ด๐ฃ๐ข๐ฆ๐ช ). Like all Trilliums, a typical specimen of this species has three leaves atop a slender stem (botanically called a โscapeโ). A popular anecdote is that Trillium plants with fewer than three leaves are seedlings or juvenile, which will eventually mature to sport the characteristic trio of greens. But this is not always true.
Scientists studied how bashful trilliums are affected by deer grazing in the Smoky Mountains. Trillium leaves, which are tasty to deer, grow from an underground rhizome. If a plant loses all its leaves to a hungry deer, it wonโt be able to make new leaves that year. Instead, the plant draws from energy stored in its rhizome to sustain itself and fuel new growth in the following spring. Deer damage isnโt too taxing for the plant if it happens only occasionally. Unfortunately, deer have become extremely numerous in parts of the Smokies, due to lack of natural predators. Turns out, repeated annual grazing can weaken even mature Trillium plants, so much so that they produce smaller growths with fewer leaves. In fact scientists found that where deer grazing is intense, some single-leaved Trillium plants can actually be upwards of a decade old! They know this by carefully excavating the rhizomes and counting the scars of past yearโs growth, kind of like counting tree rings. Unlike tree rings, this natural record is less reliable for aging Trilliums much beyond a decade, because the oldest parts of the rhizomes will naturally decay over time. This means some of these plants may well be much older than a decade... What is clear though, is that baby plants and exhausted old plants are indistinguishable based on the number of leaves visible above ground.
