Fringed Polygala (Polygala paucifolia)
These tiny flowers are only 3/4-inches long and remind me of miniature orchids. My grandmother always called them “baby toes,” and I have heard other people call them that too, but they are better known as fringed polygala, gaywings, flowering wintergreen (because their leaves look so much like wintergreen leaves) and fringed milkwort.
Fringed polygala has creeping stems that grow partly under the soil and partly on top of the soil, with several shiny leaves at the top of each stem. The stems are less than six inches long, so the flowers grow very close to the ground. Polygala produces two types of flowers… unseen underground flowers that are self-pollinating and never open, and the pinkish-purple orchid-like flowers that appear in May and June.
This year there are several large patches of fringed polygala blossoming in the wooded area at the edge of our lawn. The soil is rich and moist there, and the polygala must like the growing conditions to have spread so quickly from the single fringed polygala that I transplanted in that spot only a few years ago.
Written by Shirley | Filed Under Wildflowers
Please leave a comment!