Plantae > Tracheophyta > Liliopsida > Asparagales > Asparagaceae > Maianthemum > Maianthemum bifolium

Maianthemum bifolium (May Lily)

Synonyms:

Wikipedia Abstract

Maianthemum bifolium (false lily of the valley or May lily) is often a localized common rhizomatous flowering plant, native from western Europe (including Britain) east to Siberia, China and Japan. Non-flowering stems usually have only one waxy leaf, but on flowering plants there is one basal leaf that withers away before flowering, and two stem leaves produced alternately up the 10–20 cm tall stems, which are topped off with many star shaped white flowers. The leaves are heart to triangular, 3–8 cm long and 2–5 cm broad, with small fine hairs on the veins. The flowers have 4 tepals, 4 stamens and have 2 chambers in the pistil; flowering is in mid spring to early summer. This species, along with Maianthemum canadense and Maianthemum dilatatum are the only 4-tepaled species. One to two seed
View Wikipedia Record: Maianthemum bifolium

Attributes

Bee Flower Color [1]  Blue-Green
Flower Color [1]  White
Height [2]  8 inches (.2 m)
Lifespan [2]  Perennial
Structure [4]  Herb
Light Preference [3]  Mostly Shady
Soil Acidity [3]  Mostly Acid
Soil Fertility [3]  Mostly Infertile
Soil Moisture [3]  Moist

Protected Areas

Ecosystems

Predators

Bison bonasus (European bison)[5]

External References

USDA Plant Profile

Citations

Attributes / relations provided by
1Arnold SEJ, Faruq S, Savolainen V, McOwan PW, Chittka L, 2010 FReD: The Floral Reflectance Database — A Web Portal for Analyses of Flower Colour. PLoS ONE 5(12): e14287.
2PLANTATT - Attributes of British and Irish Plants: Status, Size, Life History, Geography and Habitats, M. O. Hill, C. D. Preston & D. B. Roy, Biological Records Centre, NERC Centre for Ecology and Hydrology (2004)
3ECOFACT 2a Technical Annex - Ellenberg’s indicator values for British Plants, M O Hill, J O Mountford, D B Roy & R G H Bunce (1999)
4Kattge, J. et al. (2011b) TRY - a global database of plant traits Global Change Biology 17:2905-2935
5Food eaten by the free-living European bison in Białowieża Forest, Zofia GĘBCZYŃSKA, Marek GĘBCZYŃSKI and Ewa MARTYNOWICZ, Acta Theriologica 36 (3-4), 307-313, 1991.
Abstract provided by DBpedia licensed under a Creative Commons License
Species taxanomy provided by GBIF Secretariat (2022). GBIF Backbone Taxonomy. Checklist dataset https://doi.org/10.15468/39omei accessed via GBIF.org on 2023-06-13; License: CC BY 4.0