Wildflower Portraits

Bloodroot (Sanguinaria canadensis)

A childhood book, Two Little Savages, pointed out the blue hepatica as the first woodland wild flower of spring. Hepaticas hide their heads among their three lobed leaves and only open their starry blue or pink blooms when they’re ready. The more eager bloodroots seem to open all at once, ten days of joyful white blossoms at the edge of the garden and scattered throughout the meadow. Their fat reddish roots (that bleed when cut) choke out other plants, but not all: dutchman’s breeches send up their lacy leaves and stems of nodding pantaloons from tiny bulbs that sit below the roots of the larger plant a few weeks later. Bloodroot grows along the river and some lowland streams in our area. Like false hellbore (which outcompetes it), it favors pockets of rich soil. I moved a single clump from the riverbank to my garden forty years ago and now it grows throughout my garden and much of my meadow, especially where the grass is thinner. So it does well enough in our uplands away from water though I have never seen it in the wild there. Perhaps it hasn’t reached more distant areas in its post glacial travels or perhaps clearing and cattle grazing on the uplands in the nineteenth century led to its retreat to the center of its distribution.

Bloodroot sets lots of seed in plump scimitar shaped pods that poke up under its leaves in June. The seeds must germinate well: ants or birds have spread the plant all over my garden and meadow. I usually however reproduce bloodroot by root division, which is simpler than from seed. The naked reddish rhizomes lie just under the ground. A clump is easily lifted to pot or put elsewhere in the garden. You must do this if the bloodroots are encroaching on your yellow lady’s slippers or trilliums. (Even some hostas are vulnerable.) Bloodroots do well in sun or shade in any garden soil. Their leaves start to look messy in July, when you may cut them off.