Yellow trout lily, or yellow dogtooth violet, grows in Ozark woodlands, mostly in the southeast part of the state. It often forms colonies of nonflowering plants having only a single mottled blade-shaped leaf. Two-leaved plants produce the yellow flowers.
Growth habit: The plants are perennial, growing from a bulblike corm. Most plants in a colony only produce a single, blade-shaped leaf, which usually is held erect and usually mottled with brown.
The flowers are single at the tip of the single flowering stalk; yellow, sometimes tinged with orange, brown, or green. The 6 yellow tepals (3 petals plus 3 petal-like sepals) are strongly reflexed (they bend backward) as the flower ages. Flowering is restricted to plants that have 2 leaves.
Blooms March–May.
The leaves are narrowly ovate or elliptic, tapering at both ends, usually mottled with brown, and lack a waxy coating.
The fruit is an obovate (egg-shaped, with the wider part at the outer end) capsule, with the tip broadly rounded or straight across (not tapering into a pointed beak).
Similar species: Missouri has one other species of yellow-blooming dogtooth violet: Erythronium rostratum. It, too, is commonly called yellow trout lily, yellow dogtooth violet, or yellow adder’s tongue; a more specific name is “beaked trout lily.” It occurs in similar wooded habitats. Here’s how to tell the two apart:
- Distribution: E. americanum is scattered mostly in the southeastern part of the state (Ozarks and Ozark border regions). E. rostratum is scattered mostly in the southwestern part of the state (Ozarks and unglaciated plains of southwest Missouri).
- Fruit tips: E. americanum‘s fruits are broadly rounded or straight across at the tip, whereas those of E. rostratum taper to form a pointy beak at the outer tip.
- Tepal bases: In E. americanum, the bases of the tepals (petals and petal-like sepals) do not wrap around the stamens, but in E. rostratum, each tepal has a pair of tiny indentations at the base, which wrap around the adjacent stamen.
- Tepal bending: E. americanum’s tepals are strongly reflexed (bent backward); in E. rostratum, the tepals spread outward, but they usually don't reflex backward.
Missouri also has two species of white-blooming dogtooth violets; both have their own pages in this online field guide: white dogtooth violet, found primarily in wooded habitats, and prairie dogtooth violet, found mostly in prairies and other open habitats.
Stem length: 4–8 inches, flowering at the shorter length and reaching the longer length as the fruits mature.
Scattered in the Ozarks and Ozark border counties.
Habitat and Conservation
Occurs in moist bottomland and upland forests in ravines and valleys, less commonly on shaded lower ledges of bluffs.
This species, like white dogtooth violet (E. albidum) and our other yellow trout lily, E. rostratum, often grows in large colonies of mostly nonflowering plants represented aboveground as single leaves, usually somewhat mottled with brown.
Status
Native Missouri spring-blooming wildflower; woodland wildflower.
Human Connections
The leaves and corms of various dogtooth violet species apparently have been cooked and eaten, but the corms have also been reported to have emetic properties (causing vomiting).
Because the flowers are so beautiful, dogtooth violets are often used in gardens. If you want to plant them, please don’t dig them from the wild. Instead, purchase plants from ethical nurseries. It takes at least four years to raise a flowering plant from seed. Ethical native wildflower nurseries propagate dogtooth violets primarily by vegetative reproduction of cultivated plants.
Although plants in this genus are called “dogtooth violets,” they look absolutely nothing like violets, and for good reason: They are in a different family! They are in the lily family, so they are more closely related to tulips and daffodils.
The common names “trout lily” and “fawn lily” both reference the mottled leaves and put the plant in the correct family.
The term “dogtooth” apparently refers to the pale, conical underground corms, which supposedly resemble the canine teeth of dogs.
Calling this plant an “adder’s tongue” is a fanciful way of saying the leaves look like snake tongues, but it runs the chance of being confused with a group of fern allies also called adder’s tongues (genus Ophioglossum).
The genus name, Erythronium, is from the Greek root erythro-, meaning “red”; it originally applied to a European relative that had reddish flowers. That European species, by the way, is E. dens-canis, whose species name means “dog-tooth,” in reference to the elongated shape of the whitish corms.
Ecosystem Connections
A variety of bees, including honeybees, mason bees, cuckoo bees, digger bees, plasterer bees, halictids (sweat bees), and andrenids (mining bees) visit the flowers. One species, the trout-lily andrena, or Easter bee (Andrena erythronii), is an early spring miner bee notable for favoring the members in this genus. Flies, butterflies, and skippers also visit the flowers for nectar, pollen, or both.
Dogtooth violets are one of several groups of spring wildflowers whose seeds have white, oily appendages called elaiosomes and are distributed by ants:
- The ants collect and carry the seeds to their nests, eat away the nutritious portion of the seeds, then discard the still-viable portion of the seeds to the “garbage” chamber of their nests.
- The ant nest's "garbage" chamber is a perfect, protected place for the young plants to sprout and thrive.
- Violets and Dutchman’s breeches are some other plants with elaiosomes.
Like other early spring wildflowers that bloom in woodlands, yellow dogtooth violet must accomplish its mission before it is shaded out by the canopy of trees above, or is covered by taller vegetation growing up around it.
Globally, there are approximately 25–30 species in genus Erythronium. They occur in North America, Europe, and Asia. There are several to look for in the U.S. northwest, if you're there in spring:
- The northwestern United States has several lovely members of this genus, including yellow avalanche lily, or glacier lily (E. grandiflorum), white avalanche, lily or alpine fawn lily (E. montanum), coast fawn lily, or mahogany fawn lily (E. revolutum), Oregon trout lily, or giant white fawn lily (E. oregonum), and California fawn lily (E. californicum).
