Red Trillium Adaptations

Odor

• Red trillium's most infamous adaptation is its unpleasant odor, which has given it such nicknames as "Stinking Willie" and "Stinking Benjamin." Penn State New Kensington's species description calls the scent of its flower "faint, but pungently foul," comparing it to "the scent of a wet dog or of rotting meat." This scent attracts the flies that pollinate the flowers.

Seed Dispersal

• Once the flowers have been pollinated, they produce green, berry-like fruit. These fruits have oily sections so attractive to ants that they are nicknamed "ant snacks," Penn State New Kensington relates. Ants devour the fruits, thus dispersing the seeds. Other animals are attracted to the seeds, specifically yellow jackets and small mammals, such as chipmunks, and these also help distribute the seeds and propagate the trillium.

Leaf Protection

• While the flowers and fruits have adapted to attract small animals to propagate the plant, red trillium's leaves have acquired the opposite trait. They are "unpalatable or even toxic to many herbivores," notes Penn State New Kensington. While deer still find the plants edible, many others are repulsed by the calcium oxalate crystals within the leaves, helping to protect the foliage from predation.

Cold Hardiness

• While red trillium thrives as far south as Georgia and Alabama, it is cold-hardy through Eastern Canada, including Quebec and Nova Scotia, according to the U.S. Department of Agriculture. The plant has adapted to survive the cold winters of this climate, chiefly because of its fleshy root, or rhizome, the University of Cambridge's Map of Life website. A rhizome is a type of underground stem, where nutrients can be stored, insulated from cold.