Medicinal Monday - Trout Lily

Erythronium americanum also known as Trout Lily is a spring ephemeral flower native to Eastern North America. This charming lily-shaped flower is bright yellow and can be found in Connecticut. Although this plant only appears for a short amount of time in the spring, Native American communities found medicinal uses for this lovely flower.

About Trout Lily

Trout Lily, is a perennial wildflower that blooms in the spring and then goes dormant. Growing in colonies, it blooms before there are leaves on deciduous trees.  The Trout Lily prefers moist, humusy soil and prefers shade to partial shade. The young plants only have one lance-shaped leaf, while the flowering plants always have two leaves.  Just one nodding blossom grows well above the stem. It has six reflexed yellow petals that are often brushed with purple on the outside and have brown-yellow stamens in the center with rusty red tips. Flowers open in the morning and close at night. The flowers are replaced by fruit that takes the form of seed capsules that start out as green and change to brown before splitting open. Non-flowering plants form a new bulb at the end of their roots from which a new shoot will emerge the following year.

Medicinal Uses

The Cherokee and the Haudenosaunee crushed the warmed leaves and poured the juice over wounds that would not heal. The Cherokee also use an infusion of the root to treat fevers and prevent fainting. Young Iroquois women ate raw plants, excluding the roots, to prevent pregnancy. The Iroquois also used a poultice of smashed roots for swellings and to remove silvers. The Montana used the bulb as a dermatological aid by making a poultice and applying it to skin irritations and boils. In addition to medicinal uses, some Native American communities ate the bulb raw or cooked. The bulbs have a cucumber-like taste.

Did You Know...

This plant is called Trout Lily because the mottling on the leaf resembles a trout moving in the water. It is also called Fawn Lily because its leaves are said to resemble the upright ears of a fawn. It is called dog-toothed violet because of the shape of its bulb.

Other names for this plant are adder's tongue, dog-toothed violet, and yellow adder's tongue.

This plant supports the Andrena miner bee family and is vital to the pollination of woodlands, berries, and flowering trees and shrubs.

Black bears are said to dig up the bulbs to eat.

The bulbs are important to the diet of chipmunks.

The genus name, Erythronium is taken from an unrelated European plant, and the subspecies name, americanum refers to America.