Plant Profile: Spring Beauty (Claytonia virginica)

Spring Beauty is a spring ephemeral that is only a few inches tall. The lovely flowers are white or light-pink with a dark-pink stripe inside their petals. There is also a yellow flower form that is less common.

Spring Beauty prefers moist soil and part-shade. The tiny flowers last for a week or so and then the grass-like leaves are not very noticeable. A few weeks later the foliage also disappears for the rest of the season.

It is native to the Eastern U.S. and from Canada down to Texas. Several kinds of bees and flies visit the flowers.

To add them to your lawn or garden, you can purchase the corms (tiny bulbs) from native plant nurseries. If you are lucky, the plants will seed themselves about and you will have a nice colony of plants.

You can sometimes miss this wildflower if you go on a walk on an overcast day as the blooms close up at night and in dim light to conserve energy.

Try planting Spring Beauty in your garden today – you can grow that!

The video was produced by Washington Gardener Magazine and edited by intern Emily Coakley.

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