Canada Mayflower Traditional Cache

Canada Mayflower is very common in these woods. These are along the red trail. Like Trout Lilies, lots of leaves all over, but very few blooms. Some starting to bloom across the trail from the cache.

Maianthemum canadense (Canadian may-lily, Canada mayflower, false lily-of-the-valley, Canadian lily-of-the-valley, wild lily-of-the-valley,^[2] Two-leaved Solomonseal) is a dominant understory perennial flowering plant, native to the sub-boreal conifer forests in Canada and the northern United States, from Yukon and British Columbia east to Newfoundland and south to Nebraska and Pennsylvania, and also in the Appalachian Mountains to northern Georgia. It can be found growing under both evergreen and deciduous trees.

Just four to eight inches tall, its bright green leaves may grow in a dense carpet of thousands, as a scattered sprinkle of hundreds, in a row of single leaves marching along a grit-filled crevice and in countless other ways and places, but nearly always in groups.

While we may perceive each little Canada Mayflower shoot as an individual plant, in fact all the foliage we’re seeing could, together, be a single organism. One rhizomatous, fibrous-rooted clone of this species may be as much as twenty feet wide, and 30 to 60 years old.

Canada Mayflower (Maianthemum canadense) does produce a flower, a small one. Fertile stalks hold extra leaves and a spike of tiny white blooms. If pollinated – by bees, flies or beetles – each bloom becomes a pea-sized fruit that resembles a golden, speckled egg. These ripen to deep red as summer goes along, before being gobbled up by mice, chipmunks or ground-dwelling birds, or falling to the ground and being toted off by ants. But you might have to look really hard to see the flowers or fruit. They grow way down near the ground, are often outshone by other plants, and may disappear before humans get a chance to spot them.

Like its cousin true lily of the valley (Convallaria majalis), false lily of the valley flowers are very fragrant. 

The cache is a "small" Push and Turn camoed Pill Bottle, containing a zip lock little plastic bag with a rolled log, held tight with a rubber band. Please BYOP and put the rubber band on your finger to log, so you don't lose it. No tweezers please. It's tied in. FLLT Permit: E.H.#04.