Like all spring ephemera, twinleaf lives the expression carpe diem—seize the day. It takes about a month from groundbreaking to seed-setting. They erupt from faintly greenish pods, with flower buds wrapped protectively in reddish purple leaves.
I have to wonder whether the reddish purple, I am guessing from anthocyanins, protects the plants from predation; the rabbits have never touched them—not one nibble. It’s remarkable, considering the voracious appetites of our rabbits. Do the plants fade into the surrounding soil because the rabbits cannot see their color? Do they taste bad? Do the plants make rabbits feel sick?
As the plants grow, green begins to show between the leaf veins, and the still-purple flower stalks shoot straight above the leaves.
Two days later, the twinleaf starts to bloom…
Within 24 hours just about all the flower buds have popped open. Green begins to dominate the leaf color.
The weather was reasonably mild with rather cold nights, so the flowers lasted at least a couple of days. This is not a plant that will give you a long floral display, but it makes up for that with all the other phases of its life above ground.
A storm literally blew in; it poured on April 11 and only slightly less on April 12. All the twinleaf petals were gone, and most of the Dutchman’s breeches, too, but the twinleaf is now all green with its butterfly leaves fully unfurled and a lot of developing seedpods.
The plants will continue to grow while they are setting seed and become a very nice groundcover under the pawpaw.
Hilarity will ensue in about a month when those seeds are ripe, if I catch them in time—the pods all seem to go within hours of each other. The seeds don’t go far, and any that come up in a bad spot can be easily moved or removed. New plants tend to come up very close to the parent plants.
