Episode 62: Bisexual Icons & Benjamin Franklin’s Farts- Trillium

Written By Em Grebner

Hello and welcome back to another week of Rooted! This week we’re digging in to an icon, a legend, and a symbol of pride- Trillium! 

Trillium is a member of the Melanthiaceae, or bunch flower family, with famous cousins like paris plants, fly poision, and some other interesting blooms we’ll gab about later. . For those of you who are swearing up and down that trilliums are lilies, you aren’t WRONG, it’s just that science has gotten a touch more right. These bad boys were classified as members of the lilly family until around 1998, when we split things up a little more in lilly land, and these guys were separated out because while they do have some lilly characteristics (petals and sepals that resemble each other with big showy blooms), but they grow differently, and for that reason they remain in the Liliales order, but are not in the lilly family. 

Trilliums are called that because they have 3 distinct petals and leaves, making them super easy to see and identify, especially because they form a triangle shape. They grow fairly low to the ground, and can be found all over the more temperate and wetter regions of north america, and in some parts of asia. They sprout in early spring from rhizomes deep in the ground, and are some of the first to pop up, often erving as one of the first signs of spring to eager forest peepers looking for an end to winter. 

They only grow in areas rich in nutrients and with not too much light- preferring the damp and fertile soil under the protection of trees. Because of this, they HAVE to be early bloomers in order to get the light they need to produce enough foo to bloom, which is why their rhisomes are so important. They have about 3 weeks of mukbanging bliss, where they need to produce and store as much sugar as possible before the trees start pushing out leaves. 

If they get enough sugar stored, these little cuties will start pushing up flowers on stalks that stay pretty low to the ground, since they don’t want too much light on their super delicate blooms. Most of these flowers start off bright white, but gradually fade to a pink or purple over time, but trillium can also be deep red to a dark wine color depending on the variety! And with over 50 to choose from in North America alone, there is no shortage of trillium to oggle at. 

While you might think trillium sounds like a lovely addition to a bouquet, you’d be wrong. These sweet flowers are some of the stinkiest, with smells ranging from “Rotting meat” to “Corpse” based on what I found online- leading some to give it the name “Stinking benjamin, which I can only assume is in reference to stinky founding father Benjamin franklin, who once wrote a letter to the royal academy of brussels, urging them to fund his scientific quest to cure the world of smelly farts by investing in research that would hopefully help ben find a drug that could make farts smell good…his logic? Asparagus made pee smell bad and terpentine made it smell good, so surely there was something out there that could help men with “Whirlwinds in his Bowels”... that whole letter is (of course) linked in the shownotes for your reading pleasure. It’s widely believed he did this as a slight spit in the face to the kind of research they were funding at the time, but I also think you don’t pitch something like that unless you are struggling yourself… Sorry for the derailment, but much like a bit of flatulence, I just couldn't hold that historical fun fact back. 


Anyway, Trillium is actually stinky on purpose, as it turns out that the stink is very attractive to flies and other pollinators that might not be as distracted with some of the other flowers. 

Once pollinated, these guys produce a small white fruit that sort of looks like a cranberry. That fruit is filled with teeny tiny seeds that ants actually help spread- take that birds. 

Ants AND yellow jackets, but basically this works because the ants really like the fruit because they think it’s a tasty insect to snack on, and it’s small enough that it doesn't take too many to carry- and if it does, the ants can pull it apart and spread the seeds that way! But most times they phone their friends, then they take the berry back to their place and feast on what they THOUGHT was a bug, but aren’t too bothered to learn is a fruit. Once the feast is over, they discard the seeds at their front door- usually about 3 ft (a meter for those not in the US) away, which is plenty of space for the new plant to put down roots and rhizomes. 

Now that we understand the plant, let's learn a bit more about the lore! 

According to many of the indigenous peoples across North America including the ojibwe, chippewa, Karok, Lummi, Paiute and others)  trillium is a sacred plant that is to be respected. This means it’s not to be harvested or picked except in very specific instances, as doing so would offend the plant, causing it not to come back for several years. 

This is true, as it’s actually very difficult for the plant to produce a bloom, and because if it’s short stalk often it would be picked after the leaves, leaving the plant with no hope of making any additional food after the expensive task of making a flower. Without it, the rhizome might lay dormant for years, or die completely. 

If permission was granted from the plant, it’s root could then be used primarily to help in childbirth. This is because the rhizomes contain saponins, which can act as an anti inflammatory, antiseptic, and an expectorant, which can all help to make the symptoms and after care of childbirth a little easier. this s is why sometimes you might hear or see trillium referred to as birth weed, sometimes misrecorded as beth weed because active listening was clearly something colonizers had a hard time with. 

Outside of childbirth, plenty of varieties were used to treat skin and eye issues (again thanks to the antiseptic and antiinflammatories), and sometimes just to treat general illness, but mostly the childbirth and skin stuff. 

There were also some reports I read of colonizers deciding that because trillium stank the way gangrene does, it HAD to be able to treat it, so said the rules of  the doctrine of signatures,, which state that plants that resemble an ailment or body part are meant to be used to cure it… I might be mourning my perceived loss of a powerpuff girl episode in which the girls team up with trillium to defeat the gangreen gang forever..at least the next 34-4 business days. 

But what I lost in old 90’s cartoons, Trillium has more than made up for in symbolism. In 1999, Michael Page - a renowned artist and activist, suggested that the trillium be used to represent the bisexual community in part due to it’s ties to the lilly family (which has been used to represent lesbians in some cases, due in part to georgia o’keefe’s slightly suggestive paintings of calla lilies that she neither confirmed or denied were meant to be vaginas” and partially because Trilliums were the first recorded instance we had of scientists referring to something as “Bisexual” since Trillium is actually a great flower to look at if you want to see a plant that has both male and female anatomy- meaning they have all the bits you need to self pollinate…today we know that really makes them intersex, but they are still widely accepted as a symbol of bisexuality. 

While they are beautiful and useful, trillium ar also extremely fragile, and most species are protected if not endangered due to loss of habitat, overharvesting with improper methods, and changes in our climate. Trillium is an important indicator or forest health, and plays key roles in supporting many of the smaller animals in the ecosystems it’s a part of. With that in mind, it’s important that you never pick, touch, tromple, or disturb trillium in any way, and that if you want to grow or buy some, you do so only from those using sustainable practices… but to be honest, I would steer clear from doing anything but celebrating the beauty of trillium and doing a careful little happy dance when you see it in the wild- unless of course you are part of a community that has historically used trillium in sacred practice.

For the rest of us though, I hope you keep your eyes peeled for this cutie, but maintain a respectful distance when you stumble upon them in the wild. 

That’s all I’ve got this week, but I’ll be back next week with new tall tales and true facts for us all to get excited about. See you then! 

Sources: 

Em Grebner
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Episode 63: Botanical Bafflement & Tyrannical Treats- Watermelon
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Episode 61: Burning Desire & A Stewed Goose- Calendula