72 Microseasons of the Pacific Northwest

Late March through early April brings the peak blooming of western trillium (Trillium ovatum) across Pacific Northwest forests, creating carpets of elegant three-petaled white flowers beneath Douglas-fir, western redcedar, and bigleaf maple canopies. These long-lived perennials can take 7-10 years to flower from seed and may live for decades in undisturbed forests. Each flower has three white petals that gradually turn pink as they age, three green sepals, and three leaves in a distinctive whorl. Trillium flowers are pollinated primarily by native bees and beetles, and their seeds are dispersed by ants attracted to nutrient-rich structures called elaiosomes. Look for these woodland treasures in moist, shaded forests from British Columbia to northern California, where they often grow in large colonies. Indigenous peoples used trillium medicinally, though modern foragers should never harvest these slow-growing natives.

Camas meadows bloom across the Willamette Valley and Puget Trough, marking the traditional harvest window for this most important Indigenous starchy food of the Pacific Northwest interior. Fiddleheads peak in lowland western Oregon and Washington, morels expand into warming riparian corridors, and first asparagus from Skagit Valley and Willamette Valley farms arrives at markets.