While out walking at Miracle Beach Provincial Park yesterday I was extremely fortunate to find a single blooming Pink Heart-Cockle (Dicentra cardii). This plant is on the red list in British Columbia and is rarely in flower. It has a brief “blink and you miss it” blooming period in late March/early April after which it withers away. Miracle Beach was established as a provinical park to protect this sensitive and rare plant.
The Pink Heart-Cockle has beautiful lacy blue-green foliage. The striking pink pendant cockleshell-like flowers that dangle from the stem like miniature lockets. This rare plant has a very restricted range and all records have been from coastal Vancouver Island, British Columbia. Look for it at this time of year in mature coastal Douglas-fir/Hemlock forests growing in well rotted wood. Protocols for inventorying rare plants are available at eFlora. Document any sightings of the Pink Heart-Cockle and report them to the Conservation Data Centre.
Update:
For those having difficulty finding additional information about this rare flower on-line please look a little closer at the image of the flower and note the date of this post. It reliably blooms only on April 1st.
Beautiful! We’ll be careful where we step at Miracle Beach this summer.
:-p
Pretty hard to find this plant – it only blooms on April 1. Thanks for stopping in Susannah!
OK Dave..you got me for a whole day….
Dave Fraser, Manager, BC Conservation Data Centre
Do you think I should submit a report?!? Thanks for stopping in Dave!
stumbled across your blog completely by accident, I was trying to figure out a hybrid Erythronium and your blog came up…nice to reconnect ..and your blog is terrific