Wildflowers of Ainsworth: Large-flowered Bellwort

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These guys look like the Morning After the Night Before, if you ask me. And their scientific name, Uvularia grandiflora, sounds like a hymn to the porcelain god.

Found in the woods in Deep River County Park.

Here's a nice tidbit from a website about Wildwood Park in Virginia:

The genus name Uvularia comes from the Latin uvula, the name for the little organ that dangles in the back of your throat. Presumably the dangling flowers were thought to resemble uvulas. A Medieval philosophy called the Doctrine of Signatures claimed that God had given mankind clues to the medicinal uses of plants by shaping them to look like the organs they were useful in treating. For this reason bellworts were thought useful in treating sore or inflamed throats. However, they appear not to have been very effective as I can find no mention of them in more modern books of medicinal plants. The species name grandiflora comes from Latin and simply means "large flower." The English name bellwort is not at all mysterious; bell refers to the shape of the flower, and wort is an old English word for plant.