Imagine a plant so lovely that the person who created the global system for naming living things – a person dubbed ‘Princeps botanicorum’ (Prince of Botanists) – chose it as his favourite. Meet Twinflower (Linnaea borealis).
Swedish biologist Carl Linnaeus developed the systematic way of assigning scientific names to plants and animals that is still in use today. During his career in the mid-18th century, Linnaeus classified and named more than 12,000 species. Ironically, though he was known for his ego Linnaeus didn’t name Twinflower after himself. Fellow scientist and supporter Jan Frederik Gronovious used Linnaeus’ system to name this plant in his honour and in recognition of it as Linnaeus’ favourite.
While you might not know to look at it, Twinflower is a shrub; its perennial, woody stems creep along the forest floor rather than growing upright. This is a member of the Honeysuckle Family (Caprifoliacaea), with tiny bell-like flowers resembling those of our native Fly Honeysuckle (Lonicera canadensis).
Twinflower can cover the forest floor in dense patches, putting up hundreds of stalks that each support two flowers, hence the name. When you find a flowering patch, you’d do well to get down on hands and knees to not only admire its beauty but also inhale its scent. Twinflower has an incredible fragrance that belies its size – strong, sweet, and in the same league as Lilac and Linden among my favourites. Despite our affinity for it, Twinflower’s scent isn’t for us: it attracts pollinating insects including native bees, butterflies, moths, and wasps.
All that pollination is often for naught as Twinflower is self-incompatible: each plant needs pollen from a different individual to produce fertile seed. Patches of Twinflower like the one shown here are clones resulting from vegetative spread, and usually produce few viable seeds. Those that are successful have tiny hooks that allow them to hitch-hike on passing mammals and birds, helping the plant reach new locations.
Twinflower is common in forests across the Island, though I find it most often in mossy woods growing on land that has never been farmed. If you’ve walked the Island’s wooded trails or forested parts of the Confederation Trail, you’ve passed by this plant even if you didn’t notice it. When not in flower, the trailing leaves could be easily overlooked.
I’m often asked which PEI plant is my favourite, and the truth is it’s usually whichever one I’m looking at in the moment. Today, I’ll join Linnaeus and put Twinflower among my favourite parts of PEI untamed!