Jeffersonia diphylla
Twinleaf
 
There are plants you grow for summer. Twinleaf is *not* one of them. It blooms soon after emerging from beneath the leaf litter — sometimes as early as March — and the large white flowers don't linger. Don't sneeze around these flowers. But that's not the point. The point is that something so early, so fleeting, so quietly dramatic exists in our woodlands at all.
 
The blue-green leaves are deeply divided into two lobes that give the appearance of being two entirely separate leaves — hence twinleaf — and they keep growing after the flowers are long gone, holding their architectural shape through summer. The seed capsules have jagged, fleshy outgrowths called elaiosomes that attract ants, which carry the seeds back to their nests and effectively plant them for you. The plant is doing its own propagation work. You just have to give it the right conditions: rich, moist but well-drained soil under deciduous trees, where it gets part sun in spring before the canopy fills in.
 
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photo by Fritzflohrreynolds