Trillium persistens

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.

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; 50 m; Ga., S.C.

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.