Trout Lilies are Blooming!

This "spring ephemeral" wildflower depends on the gets before the trees overhead leave out...

Image courtesy of Chesapeake Bay Program, EPA.

In 1890, naturalist John Burroughs wrote about the “Fawn lily”.  He wrote that the two leaves, on either side of the flower, stand up like a fawn’s ears, giving it an alert, wide-awake look.  Most people today call it the “Trout Lily”, because the leaves remind us of the spots and parr marks on a young trout.  It is one of the most beautiful of our early spring wild flowers, but for some reason, people seem to pay more attention to its leaves!  Which name do you like?

Burroughs also loved this plant’s root system. Each plant has a little round bulb a few inches underground.  That bulb grows “droppers” that burrow deep down into the soil. At the end of each dropper, up to a foot away from the mother plant, a new bulb and a whole new plant grows using food sent to it by the parent.  But, if the dropper hits something hard, like a rock or another root, it stops growing and the parent plant makes flowers instead.  This explains why some Trout Lily patches seem like they are just leaves, while others have many flowers.

The flowers stand only a few inches above ground, but the plant grows deep and far underground, protected by a thick layer of decaying leaves of the forest floor.  Ants and other insects living there pollinate the trout lilies while enjoying their nectar.

Photo by Rachel Dickinson 2020.

Cool Facts

Trout Lilies, with their “dropper” roots, can form extensive patches if left undisturbed. In protected stream valleys and gorges, where no one has ever farmed or built houses, patches of trout lilies that might be 200 or 300 years old!

Native Americans and settlers used trout lilies for medicine and collected the dropper roots for food. You can boil them and eat them like spaghetti. See if you can find them, growing under the decaying leaves, but leave them in place so the plants survive!

Please note:  A lesson plan version of this post is available on the "For Teachers" page.