This fun little plant is one of our native varieties of bleeding heart (Dicentra species). All of the varieties of bleeding heart, native or garden-variety, have really descriptive names. If you look at Dutchman’s breeches (Dicentra cucullaria), you can sort of imagine how they came to be named after colonial pantaloons, even if it is a bit topsy-turvy. Puffy white flowers (sometimes faintly pink) with two legs in the air and a fancy yellow shirt below, like an outfit hung out to dry. Like its Dicentra brethren, Dutchman’s breeches have frilly, or “finely compound”, leaves which kind of look like those of ferns, or carrot tops, or Queen Anne’s lace, except much lower to the ground.

These flowers don’t have a fragrance, and that is one way to tell them apart from squirrel corn (Dicentra canadensis), another closely related native bleeding heart with a great name that does have a smell.