Poison Bouquets

Photo by Yuichi Momma

Lily of the Valley

• you’ve probably felt both annoyance and adoration for these delicate flowers
• as they rapidly take over gardens
• but are also often used in wedding floral arrangements
• they’re actually quite poisonous too
• I don’t know if poison is exactly what you want in your bouquet
• but who am I to say
• it takes over vegetated areas with an extensive root system made up of rhizomes
• also called “creeping root stalks”
• they perform a type of vegetative reproduction allowing them to proliferate with impressive speed
• no seeds necessary
• new organisms arise from the spreading rhizomes and are clones of the parent organism
• little upright shoots called pips grow out of the roots at the end of summer
• and remain dormant until the following spring
• then they go from pip to 15–30 cm of leafy foliage
• the sweet scented flowers are almost always white
• and occasionally white
• their appearance depends where you find them
• in Europe, the flowers have a white stripe down the middle of each petal
• those in Asia are distinctly bowl shaped and bear a red fruit
• and the ones in the US have slightly green stripes in the petals

So no matter where you go across much of this planet you are likely to find Convallaria majalis in it’s many varied forms. Perhaps it’s in your back yard. Perhaps you’ll come across it while wandering through a forest in Japan. Be on the look out for these delicate understory flora.