Merrybells, Uvularia grandiflora, in the garden. They’re doing well so far despite how dry it is.

Uvularia perfoliata / Perfoliate Bellwort at the Sarah P. Duke Gardens at Duke University in Durham, NC

Although historically used by some Indigenous groups as medicine, merrybells are only really used as ornamental plants today. 

Jill Raggett

Sessile-leaf bellwort (Uvularia sessilifolia), also referred to as wild oats, straw lily, and little merrybells, is one of the most delicate and fragile of Appalachia’s early spring wildflowers. The plant’s distinctive form reminds me of a ballet dancer’s precise, graceful curtsy. For all its beauty, this lover of rich, damp woods is easy to overlook; it grows low to the ground, and its demure, creamy yellow flower is often obscured by slender, drooping leaves that clasp the branching stem. It’s much larger and more ostentatious cousin, large-flowered bellwort (Uvularia grandiflora), grows in a similar habitat and at the same time of year.

In early May the woodland garden was getting buffeted with a nasty strong and cold East wind but the native plants were fighting to bloom anyways.

The leaves behind it are a cut leaf coneflower, Rudbeckia laciniata.

Uvularia perfoliata / Perfoliate Bellwort at the Sarah P. Duke Gardens at Duke University in Durham, NC