''Dicentra canadensis'', the squirrel corn, is a

flowering plant Flowering plants are plants that bear flowers and fruits, and form the clade Angiospermae (). The term angiosperm is derived from the Ancient Greek, Greek words (; 'container, vessel') and (; 'seed'), meaning that the seeds are enclosed with ...

from eastern North America with oddly shaped white flowers and finely divided leaves.

Description

Squirrel corn has small yellow clustered

bulb In botany, a bulb is a short underground stem with fleshy leaves or leaf basesBell, A.D. 1997. ''Plant form: an illustrated guide to flowering plant morphology''. Oxford University Press, Oxford, U.K. that function as food storage organs duri ...

lets (looking roughly like kernels of

corn Maize (; ''Zea mays''), also known as corn in North American English, is a tall stout Poaceae, grass that produces cereal grain. It was domesticated by indigenous peoples of Mexico, indigenous peoples in southern Mexico about 9,000 years ago ...

), finely dissected

leaves A leaf (: leaves) is a principal appendage of the stem of a vascular plant, usually borne laterally above ground and specialized for photosynthesis. Leaves are collectively called foliage, as in "autumn foliage", while the leaves, stem, ...

, and white heart-shaped

flower Flowers, also known as blooms and blossoms, are the reproductive structures of flowering plants ( angiosperms). Typically, they are structured in four circular levels, called whorls, around the end of a stalk. These whorls include: calyx, m ...

s. The flowers are fragrant. It is a

spring ephemeral An ephemeral plant is a plant with a very short life cycle or very short period of active growth, often one that grows only during brief periods when conditions are favorable. Several types of ephemeral plants exist. The first, spring ephemeral, r ...

, leafing out and flowering in spring and going dormant in summer.

Distribution and habitat

It is native to

deciduous In the fields of horticulture and botany, the term deciduous () means "falling off at maturity" and "tending to fall off", in reference to trees and shrubs that seasonally shed Leaf, leaves, usually in the autumn; to the shedding of petals, aft ...

woodland A woodland () is, in the broad sense, land covered with woody plants (trees and shrubs), or in a narrow sense, synonymous with wood (or in the U.S., the '' plurale tantum'' woods), a low-density forest forming open habitats with plenty of sunli ...

in eastern

North America North America is a continent in the Northern Hemisphere, Northern and Western Hemisphere, Western hemispheres. North America is bordered to the north by the Arctic Ocean, to the east by the Atlantic Ocean, to the southeast by South Ameri ...

. It is also found among rock outcrops near mountains.

References

* * ''Bleeding hearts, Corydalis, and their relatives''. Mark Tebbitt, Magnus Lidén, and Henrik Zetterlund. Timber Press. 2008. canadensis Ephemeral plants Flora of Eastern Canada Flora of the Eastern United States Flora of the Appalachian Mountains Garden plants of North America {{Papaveraceae-stub