Trout-lily

Erythronium americanum, the trout-lily, yellow dogtooth violet, or yellow adder's-tongue, is a small perennial spring ephemeral herb in the family Liliaceae native to eastern North American deciduous forests, from Ontario and Nova Scotia south to Georgia and Alabama. The plant arises from a deep, slender, tunicate corm (bulb) that descends gradually into the soil over many years; in mature flowering plants the bulb produces a pair of basal leaves and a single flowering scape, while juvenile non-flowering plants bear only a single leaf and may persist as colonial leaf-only mats for many years. The leaves are elliptic-lanceolate, 10-20 cm long, conspicuously mottled with brownish-purple blotches on a green ground (the markings resembling the speckled flanks of a brook trout and giving the common name). The solitary nodding flower is borne on a leafless scape 10-25 cm tall and consists of six recurved bright yellow tepals 2-3 cm long, often tinged with brownish-purple on the outside, surrounding six stamens with brown or yellow anthers and a slender style. The plant flowers in early spring before canopy closure and then dies back to the bulb by midsummer. The fruit is a small three-angled capsule.