WHITE TROUT LILY 



(Adder's Tongue. Dog-tooth Violet) 



Erythronium albidum Nutt. 



Early spring Long before anything is in bloom in the Illinois oak 

 Woods woods, the close mats of moss and bare ground and leaf- 



strewn woods floor contain small red. spears thrusting 

 into the sunlight. There are hundreds of them, thousands of them, tight 

 and naiTow and sbarply pointed, poking u]j from deeply set bulbs in the 

 cold earth of very early springtime. The trout lilies are about to keep 

 appointment with the spring. 



With the scant warmth of March and early April, the shoots grow- 

 rapidly and in a few days the red color is gone and the shoots have un- 

 furled into pairs of pale green leaves decoratt'd with ])ale purple-brown 

 mottlings overlaid with a silvery sheen. 



There is one bud stalk to a plant, two leaves to a blossoming size 

 plant. There is no wasted greenery, no unnecessaiy growth of stem or 

 bud. The flower on a damp spring morning uncurls, and three white petals 

 and three white sepals washed with purplish on the backs push backward; 

 the six pale yellow stamens thrust outward, with the three-forked pistil 

 extending still further. Waxen, fragrant, lovely as a miniature Easter 

 lily, standing by thousands through the oak woods in spring-time, the 

 trout lily, the adder's tongue, the dog-tooth violet, blossoms brieily and 

 is gone. It is one of the quickest flowers to come into bloom at the close 

 of winter, one of the quickest to make seeds. Before April is over, most 

 of the leaves have turned yellow and have disappeared, and in the whole 

 broad oak woods there may be no sign that trout lilies in a white and 

 perfumed crowd bloomed as soon as the time was right. 



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