Trillium erectum
species of plant
Trillium erectum, the red trillium, also known as wake robin, purple trillium, bethroot, or stinking benjamin, is a species of flowering plant in the family Melanthiaceae. The plant takes its common name "wake robin" by analogy with the European robin, which has a red breast heralding spring. Likewise Trillium erectum is a spring ephemeral plant whose life-cycle is synchronized with that of the forests in which it lives. It is native to the eastern United States and eastern Canada from northern Georgia to Quebec and New Brunswick.
Description
Trillium erectum is a perennial, herbaceous, flowering plant that persists by means of an underground rhizome. Like all trilliums, it has a whorl of three bracts (leaves) and a single trimerous flower with three sepals, three petals, two whorls of three stamens each, and three carpels (fused into a single ovary with three stigmas). It grows to about 40 cm (16 in) in height with a spread of 30 cm (12 in). The petals are dark reddish brown, maroon, purple, pale yellow, or white. The ovary is dark purple to maroon regardless of petal color. If the flower is successfully pollinated, the petals wither, leaving behind a fruit that ripens to a dark red berry-like capsule, 1–1.5 cm (0.39–0.59 in) long.
This brief starts where responsible research should: with the source description of “Trillium erectum” as species of plant. Everything that follows is an evidence route, not borrowed authority.
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The subject matters to the science & nature register because the source frames it as species of plant. Its deeper value depends on whether names, dates, institutions and citations support that framing.
Stable identifiers, scientific names and standards terminology offer the best bridge between this overview and specialist evidence. The source revision retrieved here is dated May 30, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q3539177. None of the 0 selected statements returned an explicit reference.
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This entry incorporates text from “Trillium erectum” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.