Stylophorum diphyllum - Celandine Poppy, Yellow Wood Poppy

🌿RARE Southern Woodland Native💛

Cheerful yellow flowers atop handsome green foliage with a blue hue. Native to the mountains of East Tennessee and beyond, these dazzling woodland plants are very easy to grow! 

They thrive in moist, rich soils in partial to full shade. When mature, they are somewhat drought tolerant, however, they will go dormant in summer if conditions are too hot and dry. Under ideal conditions they will slowly spread by seeds.

Use these plants in woodland settings, cottage gardens, pollinator gardens, rain gardens, naturalized areas, along streams, and ponds. Combine them with Black Cohosh (Actaea racemosa), Virginia Bluebells (Mertensia virginica), Wild Bleeding Hearts (Dicentra eximia), Wild Geranium (Geranium maculatum), and Woodland Phlox (Phlox divaricata) for a spectacular extended flowering show.

🐿️Woodland mammals feast on the seeds.
🐝Bees are attracted to the flowers.
🦌Deer avoid Celandine Poppies.

🎭These plants are sometimes confused with Greater Celandine (Chelindonium majus), a Eurasian invasive plant. While the foliage is very similar, Stylophorum has showier, larger flowers - up to 2.25" - and very ornamental fuzzy seed pods. 

📐12-14"T x 9-12"W.
🌡️Cold hardy to zone 4 (-30F).

Plant Nerd: In the wild, these charming plants are critically endangered on the edges of their range, and uncommon throughout. 

Native Americans have used these plants to make a yellow dye. 

Stylophorum diphyllum naturally use ants to help spread their seeds. The seeds have a coating that attracts ants, the ants gather the seeds and bring them to their dens and feed the coating to their young, effectively planting the plants! The name for plants using ants to disperse their seeds is called myrmecochory. Pretty cool!

🌎Ecological value: The flowers produce much-needed early season pollen which attracts and feeds pollinators, however they don't offer nectar, which is quite interesting. Multiple sources suspect that these plants are host plants for butterflies, but note that these plants are not well studied, so it's not known at this time of they are or not. In addition to helping the food web via ants and small mammals, their roots + drought tolerance (once established) make them good groundcover choices for shady areas with steep slopes.

⛰️Need to stabilize your steep slopes? Plant Celandine Poppies under native Aronia, Elderberries, and Witch Hazel for the perfect combination of beauty, shade tolerance, and slope stabilization.