| General Description | Trillium erectum is a rhizomatous perennial wildflower with three smooth, green, broadly ovate leaves and dark garnet to white petals. |
| Landscape | A natural choice for woodland gardens. Also does well in a peat terrace or pocket planting in rock gardens. |
| Propagation | By careful division and replanting when leaves have died down. Can also be propagated by fresh seed, cleaned and sown 15 mm deep in a propagating mix with leafmould and kept in a cool, shady frame. Plants propagated from seed take about 5 years to flower. |
| Cultivation | Grow in part shade, in moist, well-drained, slightly alkaline, well-aerated, humusy (leafmould is preferable) soil. Tolerates sun when soil is consistently moist and shaded during the hottest part of the day. |
| Habitat | Moist woodland and scrub, often on limestone formations. |
| Leaf Description | Green, soft, glabrous, glossy, up to 20 cm long, broadly ovate, apex acute or cuspidate, margins entire, venation reticulate, sessile (immobile), in a group of three arranged in an apical whorl. |
| Flower Description | Solitary, terminal, upright or oblique on pedicels up to 10 cm long, three lanceolate, sepals up to 5 cm long and light green suffused with red-purple to margins which are the darkest, petals are dark garnet to white, elliptic with apex acute, up to 8 cm long, spreading or incurved, distinctly veined, unpleasant smelling. |
| Fruit Description | Berries are glabrous, tri-valved. |
