Species
+

Trillium erectum L.

Beth Root, Red Trillium, Stinking Benjamin, Wet Dog Trillium

Climate known 61 photographs
Add one to my plants Sow seed

Every figure on this page is derived from public data by a stated rule and says its source; nothing here is written by a person or a model, except the Wikipedia passage, which is quoted and marked as such. How it is made.

Summary

Trillium erectum, the red trillium, also known as wake robin, purple trillium, bethroot, or stinking benjamin, is a species of flowering plant in the family Melanthiaceae. The plant takes its common name "wake robin" by analogy with the European robin, which has a red breast heralding spring. Likewise Trillium erectum is a spring ephemeral plant whose life-cycle is synchronized with that of the forests in which it lives. It is native to the eastern United States and eastern Canada from northern Georgia to Quebec and New Brunswick.

Text from Wikipedia, “Trillium erectum”, CC BY-SA 4.0, quoted as written. Kept separate from everything derived here.

About the genus · Trillium

Trillium is a genus of about fifty flowering plant species in the family Melanthiaceae. Trillium species are native to temperate regions of North America and Asia, with the greatest diversity of species found in the southern Appalachian Mountains in the southeastern United States.

Text from Wikipedia, “Trillium”, CC BY-SA 4.0, quoted as written.

Family
Melanthiaceae
Described by
L.
Native to
New Brunswick, Nova Scotia, Ontario +23
Wild records
1825 in range· 479 open

At a glance

Warmest month
25°C
Jul, mean day; nights 16 °C (CHELSA)
Rain
1186mm/yr
12 wet months · peak Jul 116 mm (CHELSA)
Light
9–38DLI
mol/m²/day, winter to summer, open sky (CHELSA shortwave)
In short condensed by rule from the cultivation cards · not written by a person
Rain rule: no season, 70% of the rain takes 8 months (May to December in the northern hemisphere). Habitat rain 1186 mm a year, wettest July at 116 mm, driest February at 76 mm (habitat calendar, northern hemisphere). Open sky over the habitat: 9 to 38 mol/m²/day. Cold floor -21.4 °C (1st-percentile habitat night, NASA POWER).
Each sentence is one card's own one-line form, written by the same rule as the card (Its year, Rain, Light, Temperature); the note cannot say what a card does not. Months are given for the northern hemisphere (set your site in Settings to change this), and the habitat's own alongside. The cards · the figures.

Also known as Trillium erectum f. erectum.

Cultivation

Its year Rain rule: no season, 70% of the rain takes 8 months (May to December in the northern hemisphere).

This species’ habitat figures, and what two fixed rules read from them.

The rain rule reads no season: 70% of the year's rain (849 mm of 1186 mm) takes 8 months, May to December. Mean temperature moves 27.0 °C between the warmest and coldest month. Months are the habitat's, northern hemisphere; shifted six months for a southern-hemisphere collection: November to June.

Read from the median year of CHELSA monthly rainfall and mean temperature across the envelope cells: the rain rule takes the smallest set of months carrying 70% of the rain and calls it winter when its mean is more than half a degree below the year's, summer when more than that above, and neither in between; the temperature rule, used only under 120 mm, names the cooler six months when they are at least a degree cooler than the other six. Months are shifted for the other hemisphere only where the temperature curve gives a season to reverse. A reading of the curves, not an observation of the plant.

Rain Habitat rain 1186 mm a year, wettest July at 116 mm, driest February at 76 mm (habitat calendar, northern hemisphere).

This species’ habitat figures, with their source.

1186 mm a year at the habitat, 849 mm of it May to December. Wettest month July at 116 mm, driest February at 76 mm. Across the envelope cells the year's total runs 962 mm to 1488 mm (10th to 90th percentile of each cell's own year) (median year across the envelope cells, CHELSA; habitat calendar, northern hemisphere).

CHELSA monthly precipitation, median year across the envelope cells. The rain that falls where the species is recorded; nothing about how the plant takes water.

Light Open sky over the habitat: 9 to 38 mol/m²/day.

This species’ habitat figures, with their source.

Open sky over the habitat: 9 to 38 mol/m²/day across the year (daily light integral, median year across the envelope cells, CHELSA; the lowest 10th-percentile month across the cells is 8, the highest 90th-percentile month 40).

CHELSA shortwave radiation at each envelope cell, a daily-mean flux taken to a daily total and converted at 2.07 mol of PAR per MJ. The sky over the habitat, measured; what reaches a plant under a rock, a shrub or a shade cloth is not.

Warmth and air Cold floor -21.4 °C (1st-percentile habitat night, NASA POWER).

This species’ habitat figures, with their source.

Temperature

Coldest: the 1st-percentile night over 44 years at the typical cell is -21.4 °C, the absolute minimum -31.0 °C, about 144 frost nights a year (NASA POWER daily minima). Warmest: the 99th-percentile day is 31.0 °C. Monthly means: coldest night -10.9 °C in January (across the envelope cells -15.4 °C to -5.1 °C), warmest day 25.3 °C in July (median year across the envelope cells, CHELSA). Cold floor: -21.4 °C, which is the 1st-percentile night over 44 years at the typical cell (NASA POWER).

NASA POWER daily minima and maxima 1981–2024 at the typical cell, lapse-corrected to its elevation; CHELSA monthly means, median year across the envelope cells, CHELSA. The cold floor is the figure named in its sentence. Not a measured survival limit for any plant in a pot.

Humidity

Relative humidity at the habitat: 56 to 62% across the year (monthly means, median year across the envelope cells, CHELSA). A figure about the air, saying nothing about how the plant takes water.

CHELSA relative humidity, median year across the envelope cells.

The figures the cards read from are in Climate below, and where they came from in Natural habitat.

Climate across the habitat

Habitat climate through the yearMean day from -2 °C in Jan to 25 °C in Jul; mean night from -11 °C in Jan to 16 °C in Jul. The cold quarter, Dec to Feb, is the three months around the coldest night. 1186 mm of rain a year, most in Jul. The bands show the 10th to 90th percentile across 1316 habitat cells. Over 44 years at the typical cell the absolute minimum was -31.0 °C and the 99th-percentile day 31.0 °C; neither is dated to a month. Beneath: daily light integral and relative humidity through the year, each on its own scale.-40°-20°20°40°frost31.0° 99th-percentile day (undated)-31.0° lowest night in 44 yrs (undated)°C · day and nightcold quarter0255075100125150mm rainDLI 9–38RH 56–62 %JanFebMarAprMayJunJulAugSepOctNovDec
day night rain 10th–90th percentile across 1316 habitat cells cold quarter: the three months around the coldest night extremes over 44 years at the typical cell, marked at the edge: undated DLI, mol/m²/dayRH %each on its own scale
Figures by month
JanFebMarAprMayJunJulAugSepOctNovDec
Day °C-2 / -6–3-1 / -4–54 / 1–1012 / 9–1618 / 16–2123 / 21–2525 / 23–2824 / 22–2720 / 18–2313 / 11–167 / 4–111 / -3–5
Night °C-11 / -15–-5-10 / -13–-4-5 / -8–-02 / -1–58 / 6–1013 / 12–1616 / 14–1816 / 14–1812 / 10–146 / 3–90 / -3–3-6 / -11–-2
Rain mm82 / 66–10976 / 61–10685 / 64–12194 / 75–124105 / 86–134113 / 86–142116 / 88–148106 / 85–139105 / 88–129105 / 76–133102 / 83–12997 / 73–124
DLI11 / 10–1418 / 16–1925 / 24–2631 / 30–3336 / 34–3838 / 37–4038 / 36–4033 / 32–3425 / 24–2817 / 15–2111 / 9–149 / 8–12
RH %62 / 58–6560 / 57–6357 / 56–5956 / 55–5858 / 56–6059 / 57–6160 / 58–6261 / 59–6361 / 60–6360 / 59–6261 / 59–6462 / 58–66

Each figure is the median across the 1316 grid cells holding the 1685 in-range records, with the 10th–90th percentile span across those cells after the slash where it differs. Extremes and elevation were read at the typical cell 939:2150 (43.025, -72.475). Over 44 years there: absolute minimum -31.0 °C, 1st-percentile night -21.4 °C, 99th-percentile day 31.0 °C. Normals: CHELSA V2.1 1981–2010 climatology, 0.05° cells (each the mean of ~36 1 km pixels). Envelope: median and 10th–90th percentile of each month across the 1316 distinct grid cells holding the 1685 in-range records; extremes and elevation at the typical cell 939:2150 (its coldest month's mean night nearest the median across cells); its position is the cell centre. Extremes: NASA POWER (MERRA-2) daily 1981–2024, cell 43.00_-72.500, lapse-corrected -190 m at 6.5 °C/km. Elevation: ETOPO 2022, 169 m (cell mean).

Natural habitat

Native range as published by WCVP; the marker is where the records are densest and decides nothing: the climate was read across every in-range record's cell, not at the marker.
Openly licensed records inside the range, framed on where they fall.
NativeNew Brunswick, Nova Scotia, Ontario, Québec, Illinois, Connecticut, Indiana, Maine, Massachusetts, Michigan, New Hampshire, New Jersey, New York, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Rhode I., Vermont, West Virginia, Delaware, Georgia, Kentucky, Maryland, North Carolina, South Carolina, Tennessee, Virginia
Kew's description“rhizomatous geophyte” · “temperate”· quoted from WCVP, RBG Kew (CC BY 4.0); not derived here
Map marker43.726, -72.553 · in the densest population, 432 records (24% of those in range)
Evidence usedThe map marker and the climate envelope rest on all 1825 georeferenced records inside the native range; the map shows only the 479 openly licensed ones, which alone would put the marker 78 km away. 1 record outside the range (gardens, roadsides, misidentifications) ignored. 140 in-range records are placed to worse than 10 km and stay on the map but off the climate.
The map markerthe map marker: the openly licensed record nearest the middle of the densest 1° population of the 1825 in-range records; it decides nothing.

Photographs

Trillium erectumTrillium erectumTrillium erectumTrillium erectumTrillium erectumTrillium erectumTrillium erectumTrillium erectum

Photographs: (c) Evan M. Raskin, some rights reserved (CC BY) (2); no rights reserved · CC0; (c) Tom Scavo, some rights reserved (CC BY) (5).

Photographs: iNaturalist did not answer when this page was built; what is shown came from the sources that did.

Papers naming this species

Works whose title or abstract names Trillium erectum, most cited first, from OpenAlex (CC0). A mention, not a cultivation source: nothing on this page is drawn from them.

In a long-term experimental demography study, excluding ungulates reversed invader's explosive population growth rate and restored natives
Susan Kalisz, Rachel B. Spigler, Carol C. Horvitz (2014) · Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences
Size-dependent gender modification in a hermaphroditic perennial herb
Stephen Wright, Spencer C. H. Barrett (1999) · Proceedings of the Royal Society B Biological Sciences
Meiotic Chromosome Structure in Trillium erectum L
C. Leonard Huskins, Stanley G. Smith (1935) · Annals of Botany
TRANSIENT PHOSPHORYLATION OF DEOXYRIBOSIDES AND REGULATION OF DEOXYRIBONUCLEIC ACID SYNTHESIS
Yasuo Hotta, Herbert Stern (1961) · The Journal of Cell Biology
Steroidal saponins from the roots of Trillium erectum (Beth root)
Patricia Y. Hayes, Reg Lehmann, Kerry G. Penman, William Kitching (2008) · Phytochemistry
Phenological Observations of Spring Geophytes in Quebec
Paul E. Vézina, Miroslav M. Grandtner (1965) · Ecology
III. A Cytological and Cytochemical Approach to an Understanding of Radiation Damage in Dividing Cells
A.H. Sparrow, Montrose J. Moses, Rebecca E. Steele (1952) · British Journal of Radiology

Similar habitat climate the 6 species whose habitat climate is nearest this one's: mean day and night, month by month, and rain on a log scale, in calendar order, so a habitat with the same seasons six months out is far, not near. Nothing else counts: not range, not family.

Other Trillium 4 in the reference

History & registers

Where this page came from built 2026-09-20 · dossier v2 · node
gbif.species answeredcarried from build of 2026-09-19 (offline re-derivation; the backbone was not asked)
gbif.synonyms answeredcarried from build of 2026-09-19 (offline re-derivation; the backbone was not asked)
gbif.vernacular answeredcarried from build of 2026-09-19 (offline re-derivation; the backbone was not asked)
wcvp.distribution answered
gbif.occurrences answeredGBIF occurrence download https://doi.org/10.15468/dl.3h4zam
climate answered
wikidata answeredcarried from build of 2026-09-19 (rederive); that build: carried from build of 2026-09-19 (rederive)
wikipedia answeredcarried from build of 2026-09-19; this build: skipped
inat.taxon not asked
inat.photos.wild answeredcarried from build of 2026-09-19; this build: skipped
inat.photos.cultivated nothing to reportcarried from build of 2026-09-19 (rederive); that build: carried from build of 2026-09-19 (rederive)
commons nothing to reportcarried from build of 2026-09-19 (rederive); that build: carried from build of 2026-09-19 (rederive)
gbif.media answered
openalex answeredcarried from build of 2026-09-19; this build: skipped

Every upstream is recorded as having answered, reported nothing, or refused. Only “nothing to report” is ever shown as an absence. Records came from 31 datasets via GBIF.org; each carries its own licence.