Growing concern for native trilliums

Yahoo

10-05-2025

Niagara County's nature lovers may remember when forests were adrift with blooming native trilliums in early May. Those local trails of trilliums are fewer and farther between. Conservationists have long been cautious about interfering with trilliums, with numerous pressures on their survival, the woodland wildflower needs humans to be more hands-off than ever.
On a hike this week on the 75-acre Lytle Nature Preserve in the Town of Lockport, trillium blossoms were hard to find. Josh Randall, natural resources educator for the Niagara County Cooperative Extension, was perplexed. He had a photo of a trillium in bloom from the property from late April last year. In the woods, ferns, Jack-in-the-pulpits, and spring anemones were regulars in the preserve, but trilliums could be counted on both hands.
'Trillium likes stability,' Randall said. 'They have become hyper-specific to certain environments.'
What they specifically want is undisturbed, damp, deciduous woodlands, where the trees lose their leaves, and the sun reaches the ground in spring.
'Say you have a farm field and let it go for 10 years,' said Rich Ring, chief botanist with the New York Natural Heritage program. 'I don't think you're going to get trillium back there. Part of their life history is to come up and leaf out and bloom before the leaves are on the trees. They're forest plants.'
Rich said white trilliums like a richer soil with a higher pH from limestone underneath. Richer soil is ground that has accumulated years of decaying leaves.
This need for soil that has never been dug, and their slow growth rates, leave trillium populations fighting for their survival when other pressures are added.
'We don't want to lose these plants from the native areas,' said Ring. 'They're very pretty, and when people see them on trails, they are tempted to pick them. But even with picking, the plants won't tolerate that too many times.'
Six species of trillium are native to New York state. In Niagara County, the most common are the great white trillium and the red trillium, which are on the state Department of Environmental Conservation's exploitably vulnerable plant list.
Ring said legal protections for native plants are different than for animals.
'If you own 100 acres and have an endangered animal on your property, you do not own those.'
However, plants growing on privately owned land are the owner's property. Ring said the exploitably vulnerable status reads that 'a plant can not be picked, removed, damaged, or destroyed without permission of the owner.'
Encouraging landowners to protect trilliums by not cutting woods, mowing wild areas, digging plants, spraying, and introducing livestock is important for the plant to rebound.
While it is tempting to think that people could just grow more trilliums in the protection of their gardens, Ring said that's not a solution. While the need for undisturbed soil and forest canopy is a major challenge, the plant's glacial growth rate prevents gardeners from making any real progress.
With woodland plants, like trillium, Randall said the majority of the plant's growth is underground in branching, rooted colonies. Once a colony is established, it puts more growth into leaves and flowers.
'The more woods that get developed, the patchier these areas are going to be,' Randall said.
'Trilliums can live for decades,' Ring said. 'They take several years at least before they will start to flower. They need to grow and save energy in their early life, and store that energy.'
'We don't generally encourage people to purchase them,' Ring said. 'These plants are adapted to not moving. Their genetics may be especially adapted to the site they're on. So if you buy a bulb, you don't know where they're from. It may not be from New York. Conserving what we have, rather than augmenting, is what we'd encourage.'
Human development also increases chemicals in groundwater, Randall said. Fertilizers help invasive plants like honeysuckle and multiflora rose take off, which can overrun trillium. Phosphorus from detergents and potassium from burning wood can also interfere with the balance of the water and soil, Randall said.
Ring said deer pose a big threat to trilliums from grazing. He said rises in deer populations are a factor in the reduced presence of trilliums even on protected lands and nature reserves.
'Because that's such a problem, it's all the more important for people to not do the same thing,' Ring said of harvesting trilliums. 'Trilliums can live for decades.'
'It's hard to keep deer out,' he said. 'If you have a little patch of trillium that you'd like to protect, you could put a cage around it.'