If you walk through the woods when the sun is out, you may catch a glint of reflection from the forest floor. When you bend down to look, you’ll notice small, egg-shaped, shiny leaves arranged opposite to each other along a slender stem that’s trailing across the moss. It is likely that you have come across twinflower. If it’s early July in or around Nanaimo, you will notice the pretty pink nodding funnel-shaped flowers, suspended in pairs (like twins) on delicate stems above the foliage. In the fall, you can usually discern the brown spent flower-stalks still present on the plant.
Twinflower was a favourite of Carl Linnaeus, the 18th century Swedish taxonomist who formalized the binomial nomenclature that we use today to name organisms, (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Binomial_nomenclature) and the plant got its scientific name Linnaea in his honour. The species name, borealis, indicates that this plant is found in the Northern hemisphere. Twinflower is circumboreal, which explains why Linnaeus could admire this plant in his native Sweden while we also find it growing right here in Nanaimo.