Several articles I have written in the past about all the cool “stuff” found on our family’s 2-acre piece of the planet.

And these discoveries by us over the years have had all had us asking...”What is that?”

The first fall we were in the house, my mother and I spent an embarrassing amount of money at the nursery for plants and ferns for our new home. The deer loved the gourmet banquet we spread before them!

That following spring these little flowers were popping up all over our property and I was interested in them because the deer didn’t eat them.

I tried for years to identify these little flowers with no luck. I looked through field guides and trying to find out its identity ended up in frustration and years passed. Then a wonderful thing called the internet happened and all sorts of knowledge was at our fingertips. But still I had no idea where to start my search.

Finding the answer

When I joined Facebook, I found that I could touch base with friends who were very knowledgeable about our natural world. I know a lot of people are not fans of Facebook and I understand that but when it is used as a tool it is invaluable to me when I cannot identify something on my own.

I am connected to a wonderful battalion of naturalists and nature nuts, like me. All I have to do is post a picture and ask for help and I can count on at least one of them to help me with an identification. I am not afraid to admit it ... I don’t know everything. Shocker, right? I was told once by a teacher that it’s not what you know but who you know and that sure is true.

So, I posted the photo you see in this article and “tagged” every person I could think of to help me. Tagging just means below the photo I posted the names of every outdoorsy person I knew.

Within minutes, I had my answer several times over. Starflower!

I thought to myself it can’t be that simple... so I turned to my field guide and looked up starflower and there it was. I quickly thanked everyone who responded to my identification request. As I was responding to the people that replied another answer came up from one of my more science-y contacts. “Hey, you want to look up Trientalis borealis Raf.”

Immediately I looked up this information because after years of not knowing, I was eager to learn everything I could.

So now I had a common name. And I had a scientific name. Taxonomy is the grouping of species according to shared characteristics and this system helps scientists make sense of all the life on this planet categorizing and classifying all life according to a system. It sounds really complicated but once it is broken down into smaller parts, it’s not so intimidating.

A flower so simple and so pretty

The genus name (Trientalis) is from a Latin word meaning one-third of a foot. This is a reference to the height of the plant.

The species name (borealis) is a reference to north, although this plant also grows in the Midwest and the higher elevations of the southern Appalachian Mountains.

The author’s name (Raf.) is a reference to Constantine Samuel Rafinesque, a naturalist born in Constantinople in the late 18th century. He later settled in the US and recorded many new species of plants and animals.

Whew. That makes a whole more sense now, doesn’t it?

Starflower is one of the few flowers that has seven petals. Two delicate, star-shaped white flowers open above a swirl of green leaves on each plant. As long as the weather does not get too warm, Starflowers will bloom until the end of June or beginning of July.

The plant’s common name Starflower refers to the flower’s star like appearance. Other common names include Star Flower, Northern Starflower, American Starflower, Mayflower, Star-chickweed, Chickweed Wintergreen, and Star-of-Bethlehem.

Starflower has limited value to wildlife. I always wonder what it takes to have a value to wildlife because I have always believed everything has a purpose and this little flower has to be important to some creature somewhere.

The only real reference for a purpose for this little woodland flower is that the Eastern chipmunk has been known to eat some of the seeds or capsules, but this (according to the experts) does not constitute a significant portion of its diet. Also, bees and flies feed on the pollen.

Lastly, they always make me smile when I see these tiny flowers popping up all over our yard.

And after all, isn’t that enough value?

Jeannie Carl is a naturalist at the Carbon County Environmental Education Center in Summit Hill. The center rehabilitates injured animals and educates the public on a variety of wildlife found in the area. For information on the Carbon County Environmental Center, visit www.carboneec.org.