False Solomon's Seal Maianthemum racemosum Asparagaceae

Photograph taken on August 13, 2023, at Pinery Provincial Park, Ontario, Canada.

The High Rocks Trail along the Highland Scenic Highway offers an easy, 3 mile out-and-back hike featuring one of the best views in the Central Appalachians. Perched on a sandstone outcropping at over 4,000 feet (1,219 m) above sea level, the overlook provides sweeping views toward Virginia to the east and the Greenbrier River Valley to the south. I imagine this would be an ideal spot to do some stargazing, as there is very little light obstruction from the valley below.

From top: views from the High Rocks overlook at the end of the trail; false Solomon's seal (Maianthemum racemosum), whose plume of white flowers gives way to a cluster of waxy, gold and red-speckled berries in late summer; two of the most impressive speckled wood lilies (Clintonia umbellulata) I've ever come across in my travels; American lily-of-the-valley (Convallaria majuscula), a more robust and less densely-colonizing cousin of the more familiar European species, native to the Appalachian mountains from Southwestern Pennsylvania to North Carolina and Tennessee; the gorgeous mountain angelica (Angelica triquinata), also known as filmy angelica, an Appalachian endemic that produces the most impressive compound umbels of greenish-white flowers in late summer; and a gregarious woodland fungi, perhaps sulphur tuft (Hypholoma fasciculare)?

Maianthemum racemosum / False Solomon's Seal at the North Carolina Botanical Gardens at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill in Chapel Hill, NC

Yellow jacket monching on a false Solomon’s seal berry.

Genus Vespula  /  Maianthemum racemosum

Eagle River Nature Park, Malakwa, BC

16 Sep 2022

Helped a friend plant mainthemum diletatum which is starting to spread!

Maianthemum racemosum, AKA false Solomon's seal, and several other common names.

May flowers, Sauble Beach 2022

9/27/22

I’m in the midst of ~Berry Season~ and have been struck with the realisation that my experiences are probably not universal

bonus points for saying where you’re from and what you like to forage in the tags

I am a plagiarized autobiography, a wreckage A shipwreck in sheep’s clothes

It’s been a year since I joined @cliffsidewarriors-rp with my Whistlefox! Happy birthday, you ridiculous creature.

Ohio Spring Wildflower Field Guide

Photos from a walk in Appalachia’s late summer woods. The flowers of spring have now borne their late summer fruit, fungi rule the forest floor, and the intoxicating perfume of dying ferns fills the air.

From top: the incandescent red berries of partridgeberry (Mitchella repens), which illuminate the forest understory wherever its creeping foliage grows; a gorgeous Pholiota cluster, possibly golden pholiota (Pholiota aurivella); the ripening, spotted berries of false Solomon’s seal (Maianthemum racemosum), which will turn bright red by October; the luminous orange-red berries of yellow mandarin (Prosartes lanuginosa), also known as yellow fairybells; the deep purple-blue fruit of Indian cucumber-root (Medeola virginiana); common puffball (Lycoperdon perlatum), just now fruiting in the local woods; white snakeroot (Ageratina altissima), a deadly beauty infamous for diary poisonings in the 1800′s; and bluestem goldenrod (Solidago caesia), also known as wreath goldenrod, an elegant, shade-tolerant perennial unusual among goldenrods in that its flowers grow from the leaf axils rather than from long panicles at the ends of the stems.

Alright! So this blog is going to be a bit of a journal of what I've found/identified as well as a bit of a rough draft for writing pages in my fieldbook. Expect errors as this is my hobby not my job! Related to that statement is a disclaimer: please, PLEASE, do not use the info here to identify plants on its own. Always use multiple sources and fact check me. Do not put anything on or in your body without being 100% positive what it is.

Star-Flowered False Solomon's-Seal

First two: Feathery False Solomon’s Seal

Last two: Smallflowered woodland star