Possible Hibberson's Trillium in the wild

[Heather P]

Hello, Scottish Rock Garden Club People.  Heather Phillips here.  Early in September in 2009 ,I was looking for seed from Hibberson's trillium.  People from your club were interested.  I mentioned that in my search for information, I had found a picture on the Internet of the trillium in the wild growing in my area. I have been in touch with the photographer and we are all in touch with the local government parks planners and meanwhile my very own sister, Rosemary Jorna, found this plant and took this picture!  We are pretty sure it is a Hibberson's trillium growing in the wild in the hitherto unrecorded location.  What do you Rock Garden "experts" think?  Cheers.
Heather P

[mark smyth]

Unfortunately I can't see your photo but here are plants, if it helps, growing in a friends shade trough

[Rodger Whitlock]

What is the approximate location of this discovery?

I have been told by those who have seen T. hibbersonii in the wild that it grows by the millions in cracks in inaccessible, steep rock faces falling into , also on inland hills or ridges in that area, which is where Jack Hibberson originally found it. [My informants did not divulge an exact location.] Where it grows wild, it is no rarity!

My informants found a number of plants of T.h. that had been washed down streams from higher elevations. IIRC, their observation was that it grows in a black, peaty soil largely devoid of nutrients. They also reported two instances where established clumps of T.h. in gardens had been killed by the application of fertilizer. One of these was a clump grown from Jack Hibberson's original collection, alas.

There have also been rumors and whispers that T. h. has been collected at sites considerably south of Nootka Sound, but the details (if any!) are not clear. The west coast of Vancouver Island is very difficult country to access, so it probably safe to say that the full range of T.h. has not yet been determined. Indeed, the interior of Vancouver Island remained terra incognita into the twentieth century, and there are undoubtedly all sorts of surprises yet to be found.

[Lesley Cox]

Your picture doesn't show for me either Heather.

[Heather P]

Hello, Rock Garden People.  I will try to post the alleged Hibberson's trillium pictures again.  The photos were taken in the Loss Creek area.  Rodger W. will know about where that is. If this doesn't work, could I email them to someone who can make it work and he or she can post them? Heather P

[Lesley Cox]

Still no pics Heather, sorry. Can you email them to Maggi (info@srgc.org.uk) she will undoubtedly know which magical buttons to press.

[Maggi Young]

Hello everyone.... sorry about the delay.... here are the photos of the trillium.......

[Lesley Cox]

Of course I only know the plant in cultivation but colour, form and size all suggest to me that it is ovatum rather than hibbersonii. Mark Smyth's plants look entirely right and here is mine.

In all the plants shown at various times on the Forum there has been little or no variation except where some potted plants, presumably grown under cover, have been taller through being a little etoliated. There have been some very fine plants shown here from time to time at different shows.

[Rodger Whitlock]

The photos were taken in the Loss Creek area.  Rodger W. will know about where that is.

Indeed, I do. Here's a link to Google Maps, terrain view:



It's quite possible that T. hibbersoni occurs there. There is a fly in the ointment, however: Another of my informants (these people I refer to as "informants" are all professional botanists, btw, who know a *great* deal about the flora of BC) has told me that in her opinion T. hibbersonii is within the normal range of variation of T.ovatum. What you found may be nothing more than an unusually small specimen of T. ovatum.

I suggest Heather P keep mum about the exact location of this find. Knowing gardeners rather too well, I worry that if the word gets out the stand she has found is likely to be obliterated by greedy collector types.

The area around the mouth of Loss Creek is extremely rough country. There are a few trails from the West Coast Road (which Google labels "Juan de Fuca Highway" as well as "West Coast Hwy") down to the sea shore, but you can't walk along the creek itself because of cliffs, waterfalls, and dense vegetation. The forests along BC's west coast are quite dangerous places. In many sites, what looks like solid soil is in fact a tangle of fallen trees, perhaps centuries old, and the actual soil level is tens of feet underneath — and there are holes into which one may slip! A place to be very cautious.

PS: Loss Creek is geologically very interesting. It flows in the western segment of a suture between two ancient geological terrains. South of Loss Creek (and Bear Creek, Jordan River, and the Goldstream River) is the same terrain as the Olympic Mountains. North of it is another terrain entirely. At places along Loss Creek, the gorge is so narrow you can stand and almost touch both walls at once: two distinct continents, as it were. Sorta cool!



There is a small amount of alluvial gold in Loss Creek, but not enough to pay. Somewhere I have a tiny bottle containing a few infintesimal grains of gold I panned out of Loss Creek about 40 years ago.

[Heather P]

Hello, Scottish Rock Garden People.  That is my sister's hand in the photo Maggie posted for me.  My sister estimates the plant is 9 or 10 centimetres tall.  Remember it is growing through other plants and doesn't have a pot all on its own.  I sent photos to A. Ceska, a plant expert whom both Rodger and I more or less know (Rodger: more, I: less) and Ceska agrees with Lesley that the specimen in the photo looks like Trillium ovatum.    No one collected a specimen and that isn't a plan.  I am still very interested in the plants and we will try to keep track of them.  It remains that one of the photos of Trillium hibbersonii that is on the Internet--I notice it is now illustrating someone's on-line bulb catalogue--was taken in the Loss Creek area.  As Rodger described.  Sorta cool.  Thank you for your interest, everyone.  Now I am registered to this forum, I will keep visiting.  I'll try to learn to post pictures if anything interesting comes up.  Cheers.  Heather P

[Heather P]

Hello, SRGC People.  Thank you to the member who sent a personal message.  If you got my reply twice, it is because I had an error message that said I hadn't typed the code in properly so I sent it again.  Then I got an error message saying I had already sent the message.  On the other hand, if you didn't get my reply it is because the second error message was not correct and the first one was. 

Cheers.  Heather P

[Heather P]

Hello, Scottish Rock Garden Club People. SRGC. I just discovered the North American Rock Garden Society photo gallery.  NARGS.  There are some T. hibbersonii pictures at that site and also a picture in the catalogue for a small nursery in Belgium, the Green Mile Nursery.  These pictures suggest there may be some variation in T. hibbersonii colour and form or some errors in identifying the plants.  

My most useful research was reading what I could understand of Darlene M. O'Neill's thesis for a master of science from the Department of Plant Science at the University of British Columbia.  For gardeners, the most important information may be right at the beginning where Ms. O'Neill describes how the ecological niche where T. hibbersonii is found is different from the niche where T. ovatum is found. She suggests that T. hibbersonii is found where there is abundant moisture in the winter and spring but it may also be adapted to a rather dry summer.  Certainly, her report on the soil type supports Rodger's comment that people have killed their T. hibbersonii by feeding them.  Oops.

O'Neill suggests that an important identifying feature of T. hibbersonii is that the stigma extends beyond the anthers.   Her finding seems to be that while T. ovatum is content to self fertilize, T. hibbersonii is looking for a partner and has its stigma protruding to encourage fertilization by another plant. [I can't see any stigma in the photos Rosemary Jorna took.]  She found that T. hibbersonii has a shorter or less complex dormancy requirement for its seed than T. ovatum [so viable seed should sprout after one winter]. T.hibbersonii is adapted to more sun exposure than T. ovatum so the leaves are thicker and--here is where I don't read science so I am translating--have a sort of chemical sunscreen that accounts for a reddish tinge that may appear on the margins of the T. hibbersonii leaves and other parts of the plant.  Having the leaves somewhat folded along the centre line is also described as a possible modification to protect the leaf from sun exposure.  O'Neill observes that all specimens of T. hibbersonii she had to study showed pink in the flowers right from the bud stage but she speculates that there may be variation.  That's it for now.  Cheers.  Heather P