Trout Lily
Erythronium americanum

It was sunny and warm yesterday in Gilmer County. The perfect spring day provided the stimuli for growth of one of my favorite wildflowers in our gardens. There emerging from the leaf litter were the blossoms of the trout lily.

Trout Lily gets its name from the spotted leaves resembling the spots on a trout. The plant pushes through the soil, blooms, produces seeds and dies back, all before total leaf out of the forest.

From seed to blooming takes 4-7 years, and a mature plant may not bloom every year. The corm gets larger and goes deeper into the soil the older it gets, sometimes going down well over a foot. Until the corm reaches flowering size, it produces only a single, ground level leaf per season. Flowering plants bear two basal leaves. The species spreads not only by seeds but also by offshoot runners from the corms, forming extensive colonies, carpeting the forest. Most plants in any given colony are single-leaved, not yet reproductively mature. In one study the colonies were found to average nearly 150 years in age and were as old as 1,300 years.

The yellow flowers track the sun and more or less close at night. The three sepals (outer whorl), which may be tinged with brownish red on the outside, and three petals (inner whorl), which may be spotted at the base inside, are otherwise similar In bright sunlight all may recurve so strongly as to give the flower an almost spherical look.

Once used as a cure for hiccups, Roman soldiers also used this plant as a cure for foot sores and corns.