Flowers Before the Frost

Here are some more wildflowers I found blooming out in the yard yesterday.

Twinleaf, Jeffersonia diphylla, among the hardest wildflowers to catch blooming. The flower only opens for ~8 hours sometimes lasting over night if you're lucky before the petals abruptly shed off. Seriously someone needs to develop one with a longer blooming period. I feel like a double flowering variety would be welcomed for this species!

The flowers come up with the first few leaves and opens a few days before they do. The seedpod resembles a green fleshy acorn. They need to grow in a slightly moist location or otherwise get watered in the garden periodically in order for the seed pod to develop. It can't be too wet though as I found out; I transplanted one to a wetter location and I don't believe it survived the winter sadly. 

I actually have a bunch of Hepatica planted in the yard. I assumed they were all white or slightly pink, but this one seems to be almost a lavender tone. I'm hoping they'll self seed around a little and in a few years I'll get the deep blue shades that are so pretty.

Trillium luteum is the first Trillium species in my garden to start flowering. (Others I photographed earlier were at the Mt. Cuba Center.) This is among the easier Trilliums to grow, and better smelling too. Actually most Trilliums don't smell at all but some can wreak of fermented apples, or dead fish. T. luteum actually smells faintly of oranges, and is very pleasing. The petals are currently a bright green but they slowly turn yellow.

And now the bad news... It's dropping down to freezing tonight, it's supposed to snow lightly, and at the very least we're going to get a frost. I'm curious to see what survives.