May is my favorite month. I had to think about this for a while, and it was a close contest with April. But May seems to me a bit milder, and without as many storms (I could be wrong on this last part.) Classes are over, it's time for graduation. The yellow jessamine is finished, but the magnolias are blooming. There's a sort of sweet fragrance in the air on these quiet mornings, with plenty of birds singing, and there's a nest in every bush. Plus, there is a good mix of spring and early summer flowers to study. Once we roll into June, it's starting to warm up, and a large part of the landscape is entering its "high green" phase; that is, not many flowers to see, mostly foliage.

May boasts some of the prettiest wildflowers there are, and some of the most fragrant. This week's Mystery Plant is a show-stopper in both departments.

It is an herb, rising from a buried rhizome. Its aerial stem produces one or two (usually two) slender, pointed, dark green leaves, sheathing at the base. The leaf blade is prominently veiny. Flowers appear regularly at the beginning of May. A raceme of flowers is characteristic, each flower hanging from a slender stalk and on one side of the raceme. The fully developed corolla of the flower is bowl-shaped, with six fused, snow-white petals. Six tiny stamens and a single pistil may be found within. The fruits produced are small, reddish berries. The flowers are remarkably fragrant, and just one or two stalks of blossoms in a vase can fill a room with the delicate, spicy sweetness. Although it might be hard to describe the fragrance, it is not likely to be forgotten once sniffed and so figures into plenty of childhood memories.

This plant is a member of the lily family, and it is related, as distant cousins go, to Solomon's-seal, and to garden monkey-grass. Most botanists agree that this species is made up of three different, but closely similar, varieties. The varieties differ enough that they can be separated according to technical features, and the varieties have their own separate geographic distributions. Our plant is the European variety, which tends to form dense clumps, and has been widely grown in gardens and is now escaped over large parts of the eastern United States, mostly toward New England. The North American variety is hardly distinguishable and is also quite fragrant but tends not to form dense colonies. (It is most likely to be seen in rich woods in the mountains from West Virginia to Georgia.) The third variety is restricted to Japan and China.

This photo was shared with me by a friend of mine who lives near Paris. In France, the plant is called "muguet" and is now traditionally sold on street corners as a fragrant good-luck token for friends to exchange in May. I hope Claudia has a sprig for me.

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John Nelson is the curator of the Herbarium at the University of South Carolina, in the department of biological sciences. As a public service, the herbarium offers free plant identifications. For more information, visit www.herbarium.org or call 803-777-8196.