Local Botanizing in the Arcata Community Forest

By Jess Carey

One of the first flowers of the season is beginning to bloom in the redwood forest. Graze your eyes across the trail’s edge while walking along the banks of Jolly Giant Creek, and you may see this neat little lily poking out of the duff.

Look closely — this plant is only around six inches tall. Its few basal leaves are banana peel-shaped with long parallel veins and lightly spotted with faint green and purple splotches. One to several flowers balance atop long purple-green stalks, with a peculiar kind of symmetry to their blooms. Lily flowers always have parts in groups of three — the lance-like pointed sepals, white-and-purple petals, pollen-bearing stamens, and a three-branched style form neat alternating triangles. Its purple-veined petals have a sort of hand-drawn quality, as if Mother Nature herself took a pen to each bloom.

The small flowers exude a slightly sour odor — reminiscent of carrion — utilizing a tried and true strategy for attracting pollinators by imitating the stench of decaying flesh. It’s this funky smell that lends the plant its common name, fetid adder’s tongue.

Check in again in a few weeks and you will see oval-shaped seed pods drooping on their stalks, ready to drop their seeds right onto the forest floor to be dispersed by ants. Remember never to pick this plant, as it is sensitive and endemic to California’s coastal rainforests.