Trilliums are a very distinctive flower I’ve often seen in photos online but until now hadn’t seen in person. In late April my father and I happened to drive over Skyline Drive through a part of Shenandoah National Park while heading back home from other activities. Just after driving away from a pull-off we both noticed flashes of white in the woods and when looking closer realized it was a large number of trilliums along the forest floor. We turned around and headed back to the pull-off and I grabbed my camera and headed into the woods across the road.

There are times when I almost don’t know what to do, when I feel overloaded by what I see, taking me back to my youth when we’d visit certain large stores in Germany and find a Lego section that just stretched on and on and on. What do I focus on? There’s so much to see, I’ll never see it all. That’s how I felt around all these white trillium flowers in full bloom.

But I knew I didn’t have all day to spend here so I calmed myself and slowly began looking for those standout flowers or arrangements of flowers and carefully approached each one. As with many spring wildflowers, trilliums only bloom for a short period of time and so this was likely the only opportunity I’d get with them this year. I hadn’t planned on flower photography this day so I didn’t have my macro lens with me, carrying a single walkabout lens, a 16-80mm f/2.8-4 (thanks Alex). Thankfully it performed admirably and allowed me to create both closeups and wider views.

The white trillium, more formally known as Trillium grandiflorum, is native to eastern North America and seems most common in mountain forests, which is exactly where we found it. The flowers ranged a bit in size, though overall it’s a very large flower compared to most spring wildflowers I see. It has a distinctive shape with three white petals, three green bracts that resemble leaves, and yellow anthers at the center. The white of the petals can apparently grow pinker as they age, and I found some examples of this. There is also a specific variety of Trillium grandiflorum that is very distinctly pink and can be found in the Blue Ridge Mountains, but I didn’t see any of these on this trip.

My timing photographing these was very good as just as I walked back to the car it began raining and it wasn’t long before it was a heavy downpour with large gusts of wind. A little drizzle might have been nice to place some water droplets on the flowers but a heavy downpour with strong winds just doesn’t work well with flowers. I did photograph from the car while we drove through the storms, though, so perhaps I’ll share some of those photos in a future post.

I hope you enjoyed this glimpse of white trilliums. We’ve done a little research and have learned of other locations we might find these in future seasons. I very much want more opportunities to explore photographing this fabulous flower.

Have you ever seen trilliums? Let me know in the comments below.

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