This week for Flora and Fauna Friday it’s one of our widespread winter wildflowers, Crowpoison (Nothoscordum bivalve).
Crowpoison, also called False-Garlic, is a common wildflower found throughout the Southern United States, including all of South Carolina. It’s a member of the Onion subfamily, Allioideae, and a cousin of Onion and Garlic (genus Allium). Crowpoison is a hardy perennial found in a wide array of locales. It’s most abundant in fertile glades in river floodplains, in sandy barrens, and along road shoulders. Those three habitats share little in common! But the common thread they do share is sparse or short understory vegetation and full sun. Crowpoison has but a few narrow, grass-like leaves emerging from a small bulb, much like true garlic, but with a much smaller bulb. In order to eke out a living with that scant foliage, it needs lots of sunlight. So as long as it can soak up enough sun, it can grow in some of the worst soils and most disturbed sites nature has to offer.
Crowpoison blooms on the Sea Islands starting in late February but peaks statewide throughout March. Its flowers are about a half-inch wide with six petals, cotton-white with a faint green stripe down their middle, and a lemon-yellow center ringed with six short golden anthers. Very similar in shape to an individual Onion or Garlic flower. These flowers bloom most often three to six at a time, held aloft the soil on a narrow flower stalk no more than a foot high. These flowers are a great little nectar plant for early spring wildflowers. They are relied upon heavily by the Falcate Orangetip (Anthocharis midea); a scarce species of butterfly that flies whilst Crowpoison blooms and prefers similar habitats. The flowers, once pollinated, mature over spring to yield six hard, black, triangular seeds.
Let’s talk about names for this plant real quick. The scientific name “Nothoscordum bivalve” means “two-halved false-garlic” referencing its two papery bracts, which protect and sheath new flower buds, and that this plant looks a lot like wild garlic, but isn’t. If you’re ever stumped wondering if you’ve got a False-Garlic or a real Garlic, our False-Garlic lacks the trademark Onion smell. The “Crowpoison” common name is a bit of a mystery. No one knows if it is actually poisonous to crows or not. It’s not even really certain if it is toxic to humans or not. I’ve read some vague and apocryphal tales that the name originates from a Native American legend, where the plant was used to brew a poison to keep the crows from murdering the corn crop, but the current consensus is, no one knows!
Crowpoison, being a bulb plant, is a perennial that returns each year. It can also reproduce through “pups”, tiny bulblets that emerge from the base of the main bulb. Pups are a clone of the parent plant and will grow into their own bulb with time. These do two things: they form a small colony around the parent plant and they serve as an insurance policy. If the parent plant dies from herbivory, pests, uprooting, or just plain old age, then its offshoots will take its place. Crowpoison is not a prolific pup producer though. So, it’s most often found singly or in sparse clumps.
However, there is another False-Garlic species on the landscape, Slender False-Garlic (Nothoscordum gracile), which pumps out pups like crazy and rapidly forms dense colonies. This skill has elevated Slender False-Garlic into an invasive species in certain areas of the United States, particularly Southern California, the Mississippi and Mobile Delta on the Gulf Coast, and certain regions around Charleston. Slender False-Garlic is native to South America but was brought to the United States as an ornamental. You can tell it apart from our native Crowpoison from its much wider and longer bluish-green leaves, taller flower stalks, April bloom time, and propensity for forming colonies.
