We have all kinds of trillium out here [mostly toad trillium] and we were excited many years ago to find a small colony of this nodding trillium a couple of miles away from us along the roadside.
It is either nodding trillium, Trillium cernuum, or drooping trillium, Trillium flexipes. It is also called nodding wake-robin and whip-poor-will flower.
Drooping trillium's range is north from central Canada southward through the central U.S. down to almost the Gulf of Mexico.
There is so much overlap between the two varieties that it is almost impossible to tell the two apart.
