No idea what the flowers in the top photo are, but they're beautiful and common along the Beech Gap trail and down by Straight Fork in early spring.

Below, one of the favorite spring flowers in the Great Smoky Mountains National Park, the white trillium, aka wake robin. It gets that name since it appears at about the same time each spring as the flocks of robins that fly into the high country. Trillium means three lilies, appropriate for this flower with its three broad leaves, three petals, three green sepals and a three-parted ovary. The roots have astringent and antiseptic qualities that made them useful to many Native American tribes. In their beliefs, the red trillium was male and was best used for medicinal purposes, while the white trillium was female and was often used in childbirth and for menstrual problems. As the white trillium ages, the bloom turns a faded pink shade, often leading people to think that they are two different species. Since it often takes up to 7 years for a trillium to mature enough to produce a blossom, there are very few grown in nurseries. If you see them in a market for sale, especially in the Great Smokies region, chances are that they were illegally removed from the wild. Poaching had nearly eliminated the flower from some areas.