Toadshades of the Santa Cruz Mountains

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The purpose of presenting these pages is to make possible a photographic documenation of the wonderful diversity of toadshades in the Santa Cruz Mountains. Photographic documentation would be better than no memory at all. (For the time being, at least, the materials posted here are considered copyright.)

Thumbnails and larger pictures of many variations on the toadshade theme are posted in the toadshade gallery. Some pictures actually illustrate several variations.

My hope is that helpful individuals will take the trouble to email me (Ray Collett) at rayc@cruzio.com, telling me where in the Santa Cruz Mountains different and better toadshade photographs may be taken, in Spring 2003.

The toadshades of the Santa Cruz Mountains are perhaps comprised of 3 entities and, along with them, in-betweens and departures:

	1) Trillium albidum is a white toadshade with cream-colored anthers, most xx often encountered along the coastal side of the San Francisco Peninsula and xx in its northern reaches
	2) Trillium chloropetalum var. chloropetalum is a yellow or green trillium, xx with brownish anthers, surviving here and there at low elevations in the xx southwesterly reaches of the Coastal Range
	3) Trillium chloropetalum var. giganteum is a red-flowered toadshade with xx dark red anthers, which is to be enountered in the mountains, xx away from the Ocean
	4) Varied in-betweens and departures are the toadshades most often seen.

In past years, other names have been used for some of the Santa Cruz Mountain toadshades. Commonly confused was Trillium sessile, a toadshade native to the other side of North America.

Occasionally a Santa Cruz Mountain toadshade strongly resembles Trillium kurabayashii, Trillium angustipetalum, or Trillium parviflorum, which are natives elsewhere along the Pacific Coast.

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