Photo © 2004 Jim Jung and licensors. All rights reserved.

Trout Lillies

Trout Lilies which are, not surprisingly, members of the Lily family, are one of our more interesting spring ephemerals. Trout Lilies go by many names: Fawn Lily, Dog-Tooth Violet (named for its fang-like "dropper" or bulb), Thousand Leaf and Deer Tongue. I use the term Trout Lily because it takes up the least space in the Almanac.

Photo © 2006 Ruby Jung. All rights reserved.

Our area is especially blessed because we're at the crossroads of the two species of Trout Lily that call eastern North America home: the White Trout Lily (Erythronium albidum) and the Yellow Trout Lily (E. americanum). These two species are normally exclusive to an area - it either has one or the other. Our area seems to be at the fulcrum point for these two species since I've found them growing within a few feet of one another at several locations.

The small six inch leaves of the Trout Lily are distinctive - a light gray-green with purple mottling that reminds some people of the markings on a fawn. And usually you find hundreds of single leaves of this plant popping from the ground in spring and few or no blooms. The plants that do bloom invariably have two or more leaves and very occasionally you'll find several clumps of these plants crowded together blooming their hearts out. But as a rule Trout Lilies do remarkably little blooming.

It took a while to figure it all out but all those numerous single leaves you encounter on woodland walks are not individual plants. Instead they're all parts of the same plant that are interconnected below ground. Like several other species in our forests Trout Lilies form colonies of genetically identical, vegetatively produced individuals which share nutrients among themselves. If you think of a Trout Lily as a tree that was too lazy to grow a trunk you won't be far wrong.

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