Fritillaria meleagris – March 10th 2025 – Snake’s head fritillary
This is among the first plants to flower in Spring and you may see it towards the end of this month flowering in someone’s garden. Alas, it is rare in the wild, especially in Scotland.
Fritillaria meleagris by Johann Georg Sturm (Painter: Jacob Sturm), Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons
It belongs to the Lily Family, and is native over much of Europe. Although the 16th Century herbalist John Gerard wrote a description, we believe his knowledge came from a plant growing in his garden. He called it the Chequered Daffodil (or Guinea-hen Flower) but he knew the Latin name Fritillaria (Gerard 1597). His illustrations and text leave no doubt that he was well-acquainted with it, but he may never have seen it in the wild.
Fritillaria meleagris, Snake’s head fritillary, flowers March to May, 15–40 cm tall. Image: Chris Jeffree.
Alice Coates, in her book Flowers and their Histories, says: “This plant was brought to England from France, where it was discovered by an apothecary called Noel Caperon, who was shortly afterwards killed in the Massacre of St Bartholemew 1572”.
Writing in 1956, she continues: “it was not until the middle of the eighteenth century that it was realised that Fritillaria meleagris was actually a native of our own country”.
Fritillaria meleagris, flowers from two viewpoints. Image: Chris Jeffree.
So, is it really a native or an introduced species (i.e. an alien)? Ever since Gerard’s time, botanists and garden historians have been discussing this question (Harvey 1996). Stace’s New Flora of the British Isles, 4th edition (2019) says it is “possibly native”. Does it matter? Yes, it does; if native it will receive a high level of protection, but if viewed merely as a cultivated plant it might be ignored by conservationists and unprotected sites could be ploughed up.
Seed capsule, with a visiting fly. Image: Chris Jeffree.
The most recent articles on the subject are by Kevin Walker (2021) and Irena Tatarenko et al. (2022). Walker argues that all the Fritillaria plants we find in the wild in Britain are escapees from gardens. The crux of his argument is that “It seems inconceivable that such an attractive plant would have been overlooked in the wild by herbalists in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries”. Moreover, he points out that it does not occur in early literature or art (as many truly native species do). He sides with others who have suggested the plant was grown as an ornamental in monastic gardens and escaped in the 18th Century. Its first record in the wild was from Middlesex in 1737.
It has a strikingly unusual flower pattern. As described by Gerard in 1597:
Coates says: “Undeniably beautiful, it is also distinctly sinister”. She cites the poet, novelist and garden designer Vita Sackville-West who said it has “the mournful colour of decay”. Some of its names are Sullen Lady, Madam Ugly, Snake-flower, Leper Lilies, Dead Man’s Bells and Toad’s-heads.
White flowers are usually present. See the image at the head of the blog. Both images: Chris Jeffree.
Nevertheless, the functioning of the flower seems relatively normal (Tatarenko et al 2022): it produces nectar and is visited and pollinated by bumblebee queens, other bumblebees, hoverflies and butterflies. Some of the flowers are usually white, but this seems to vary from year-to-year and from site-to-site. Seeds are released from May to June but they need warm and cold treatments for proper embryo development. They are buoyant, they can float away in flood-water, germinating whilst floating or they simply sprout on the soil surface.
British and Irish distribution of Fritillaria meleagris, from BSBI/Maps.
There are many accounts of how Fritillaria meleagris grows, mostly from southern England where it thrives in wet meadows and sometimes forms huge populations, like at Magdalen College Meadow, Oxford (Wells 1994, Mabey 1996). Wells says it grows best in grasslands where the hay is cut (after seeds have been shed). It is reputed to prefer flooded grassland, but this may have to do more with the fact that farming has been unable to utilise this wet ground for crops rather than the plant’s preference for wet ground per se. Elsewhere in Europe it can be found in alpine meadows and woodlands.
It forms an underground bulb, much the same as daffodils and other spring flowers do. The bulb is the storage organ, sprouting in Spring. But in some years the bulb stays dormant (‘prolonged dormancy’). The plants are long-lived (at least 25 years) but they take a long time to colonise a site, relying on seed and bulb production.
Global distribution of Fritillaria meleagris. Left: from GBIF. The timeline of GBIF suggests it arrived in North America in 1902, but its appearance in New Zealand is only in the last few years. Right: from Kew’s Plants of the World On-line: brown is Doubtful, green is Native, red is Extinct (Belgium), purple is Introduced. Kew’s map shows North America as empty.
It is cultivated in North America where it may have escaped into the wild. For hints on cultivation in North Carolina see here. Bulbs can also be purchased in New Zealand: for a chatty article extolling its virtues see today’s Otaga Times.
There are 130–140 species of Fritillaria in the temperate world, many of them rare and some threatened with extinction because of over-collecting for medicinal purposes and habitat loss. One of the strangest things about the genus is that its members have a huge genome, from 30 to 85 Gb (billions of base pairs). Humans have only 3.2 and dogs a mere 2.3. Last year it was discovered that a small fern, called New Claledonian Fork Fern Tmesipteris oblanceolata, has 160 Gb, and it currently holds the world record. The story is here. Why would these plants have so much genetic code? We don’t really know, except that most of it is ‘non-coding’ and repetitive, some is referred to as ‘junk DNA’.
The name Fritillaria comes from the Latin word for the dice-box, used to store ad throw the dice. The species name meleagris is from the Greek for Guinea-fowl.
References consulted
Gerard J & Jackson BD (1876). A catalogue of plants cultivated in the garden of John Gerard, in the years 1596-1599. (the list can be accessed via google books)
Harvey JH (1996). Fritillary and Martagon: Wild or Garden? Garden History, 24(1), 30-38.
Mabey R (1966) Flora Britannica. Chatto and WIndus.
Pearman DA (2007). ‘Far from any house’–Assessing the status of doubtfully native species in the flora of the British Isles. Watsonia, 26(3), 271-290.
Tatarenko I, Walker K and Dyson (2022). Biological Flora of Britain and Ireland: Fritillaria meleagris. Journal of Ecology 110, 1704-1726. https://doi.org/10.1111/1365-2745.13886
Tatarenko I, Dodd M, Rothero E& Gowing D (2013). Citizen science in meadow studies: Population dynamics in Fritillaria meleagris in North Meadow (Wiltshire, UK). In Research and conservation of floodplain meadows. Noosphera. (can be accessed by entering google scholar)
Tomović G. et al. (2007). Fritillaria (Liliaceae) in Serbia: distribution, habitats and some taxonomic notes. Phytologia Balcanica, 13(3), 359-370.
Wells DA (1994). In Stewart A, Pearman DA and Preston CD Scarce Plants in Britain. JNCC, Peterborough.
Walker KJ (2021). Snake’s-head Fritillary Fritillaria meleagris (Liliaceae) in Britain: its distribution, habitats and status. British & Irish Botany 3, 262–278 doi:10.33928/bib.2021.03.263
Zych M and Stpiczyńska M (2012). Neither protogynous nor obligatory out‐crossed: pollination biology and breeding system of the European Red List Fritillaria meleagris L.(Liliaceae). Plant Biology, 14(2), 285-294.
©John Grace
