This painting is one of three created upon receiving the Michael and Donna Griffith Lowcountry Artist Award. The pieces celebrate endangered plant species native to the South Carolina lowcountry.

"The world is never going to be, in human time, more intact than it is at this moment. Therefore it falls to those of us alive now to watch and record its flora, its fauna, its rains, its snow, its ice, its peoples. To document the buzzing, glorious, cruel, mysterious planet we were born onto, before in our carelessness we leave it far less sweet." -Bill McKibben, Grist Magazine, used by permission

The name trillium is derived from the root "tri" for three because all of the flowers parts come in threes. Native Americans thought trilliums to be a powerful love potion if eaten. Although the Relict trillium is threatened primarily by residential development of its habitat, invasive exotic plant species like kudzu and Japanese honeysuckle also present a threat.