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The tips of the upper stems of Canadian black snakeroot give rise to umbels 2.5" across of greenish white flowers; each umbel usually consists of 1-4 umbellets, each with 2-3 pistillate flowers or perfect flowers and 2-6 staminate flowers. In perfect flowers, the pistils develop (and are deployed) before the stamens develop; the pistillate stage persists for much longer. Each flower has a green calyx with five lance-like lobes slightly longer than the five greenish-white petals. Male and perfect flowers add five stamens with white anthers and lack the series of hooked spines of the pistillate flowers. Female and perfect flowers have ovaries densely covered with distinctive, neatly stacked series of long, hooked bristles arrayed perpendicular to the axis of the flower. The fruit is round, 3-5 mm long, covered in rows of those same hooked bristles; it splits on maturity to release the two seeds.

Sanicula

Sanicula canadensis

Canadian black snakeroot [Blooms: Jun-Jul]

On black snakeroot, one to five 1/2" wide globoid umbels (flower clusters) arise from the tips of the upper stems. Each umbel is packed with 20-60 tiny flowers and their flower stalks (pedicels). In each umbel, 1-3 flowers are "perfect" (with both male and female organs) and the rest are staminate (stamens only). In addition to the male stamens, the perfect flowers have two long, cylindrical styles (emerging from a hidden ovary) that arch and recurve from the middle of the flower; the styles are much longer than the hooked bristles on the ovary. Both staminate and perfect flowers have a minute (<1 mm) green calyx with five rounded teeth, five dull yellow to greenish-yellow, heart-shaped petals (tip of the heart towards the center of the flower), and five protruding stamens <3 mm long with obvious yellow (or brown) anthers. The fruit is a 1/4" long round to cylindrical bur covered with short, hooked bristles; the remains of the styles often persist. The bur splits to release the two seeds inside.

Sanicula

Sanicula odorata

black snakeroot [Blooms: May-Jun]