Once the plants enter dormancy, cover it with topsoil.ĭivide these plants after four years to maintain their freshness. Keep the soil moist, especially once the plant has established. They start reappearing in the spring season. These plants start disappearing from view during early summer as they enter dormancy, giving the neighboring plants more space to fully branch out. Californicum under a part shade, and cut the spent flowers off after the bloom season. It gathers sunlight and creates food using the photosynthesis process, which helps in strengthening the bulbs for new growth. Once these plants have completed their blooming period, avoid cutting off the foliage.
It is best to maintain the moisture level of this plant even when they are dormant. The plants grow well in loam, sand, clay, and chalk soils. Soil & TransplantingĮrythronium prefers well-draining, moist, and humus-rich soil. It is ideal to provide them with around 1” inch of moisture weekly.ĭeep watering every week is better as compared to light water every two days. These plants require regular water throughout their growing period. The USDA hardiness zones of this plant are 3 – 9. It is ideal to place these plants under partial shade, particularly provided by shrubs or trees. The flowers usually open up the most in warmer climates. These plants prefer to be in damp, cool climates to properly grow. The Trout Lily grows best in partial sun. The Erythronium Dens-Canis and Erythronium Revolutum have pink flowers, and Erythronium Californicum and Erythronium Albidum have white flowers. It has stamens with deep yellow anthers hang facing downward in the center. The Erythronium ‘Pagoda’ and Erythronium Americanum have yellow flowers. The bloom time of these plants is typically in early spring. They grow small lily-shaped flowers in varying colors. These plants are bulbous spring flower producing perennials. The foliage of these plants disappears around late spring when the plants enter their dormancy. Most of the species in this genus, like Dog Tooth Violets, grow better when left in the wild and don’t like being transplanted.
These North American native plants often have leafless stems, which bear one or more star-shaped flowers. White Trout Lily is often mistaken for the endangered Dwarf, with which it often grows side by side, but the flower size difference is unmistakable.The common names for Erythronium plants include:Įrythronium, like most plants in the lily family, has broadly elliptic or ovate green leaves. Dwarf Trout Lily ( Erythronium propullans), which is very rare and has much smaller white flowers typically with only 4 tepals, and Yellow Trout Lily ( Erythronium amreicanum), which has yellow flowers and is restricted to the easternmost counties of Minnesota.
They aren't very distinguishable when not flowering. The leaves of trout lilies are easily recognizable, but there are multiple species that have the same kind of leaves and grow at the same time in the same habitat. It can form massive colonies-there are literally millions of them at Nerstrand Big Woods State Park. White Trout Lily is one of the first woodland flowers to bloom in the spring. Reproduction by non-flowering plants is via stolons (horizontal stems), that are buried just below the surface and form a new bulb at the end, from which a new shoot emerges the following year. Color is blue-green irregularly mottled with purplish brown, the mottling typically fading with age.įruit is a capsule, generally oval, at maturity held erect and 3/8 to about 1 inch (10 to 22 mm) long. Leaves are lance-elliptic to oval to egg-shaped, 3 to 9 inches (to 22 cm) long, to 2 inches wide, toothless, hairless, tapering at both ends, on a slender stalk that arises from an underground bulb, most bulbs not producing flowers. Leaves are all basal, flowering plants with a pair of leaves and non-flowering plants with one. Flowers open in the morning, the tepals flaring out and back, and close up at night. There are 6 long stamens in the center with bright yellow tips (anthers). Flowers have 6 lance-elliptic tepals (3 petals and 3 similar sepals) up to 1½ inches (22 to 40 mm) long, white usually tinged purplish on the outer surface. A single, nodding flower at the end of a stiff naked stalk up to 8 inches (7 to 20 cm) long.