In our East Woods there grows a shy wildflower that pushes through the dead oak leaves in April, blooms for only two weeks or so and has vanished by June. This is how to find it: Go into the woods on the path next to Alex Lembesis?s house (Cherry Avenue extended). Be sure to wear boots or old shoes because there are big muddy spots back there. Keep going straight until you come to the stream. This is where Jim Fletcher made a little pool by building a dam in the stream. Now, before you cross the creek, look at the ground all around you. You will see hundreds of stiff, pointed leaves about as high as your ankle. The leaves are green but look closely and you?ll see they are covered with purplish patches. If it is a sunny day you will also notice little yellow flowers here and there among the leaves. They are not much higher than the tips of the leaves.
This spring flower has been a favorite to many people, (probably including some of your own great great grandparents, who knew more about the woods than most people do today.) And so many people loved it that people in different places gave it different names. Most people around here who know the flower call it "trout lily".
But some people know it as "yellow adder's tongue", or as "dog-tooth violet", or as "fawn lily" or even "yellow snowdrop."
Look how much of the ground is covered by this group of trout lilies. It?s called a "colony" just like a nest of ants or bees is called a colony. This colony is a pretty big one and it spreads a little farther every year. And it is growing in exactly the kind of place trout lilies are famous for loving?.near a stream in a damp woods.
What makes it so hard to notice the flowers themselves? They are facing the ground instead of facing us! People say they are "nodding". So since you are bigger than an ant you will have to tip one up to get a good look at it. Just put one finger under the flower?s head and lift it gently. It?s really a pretty little flower. But they completely open only in the sunshine.
Here are some things that are special about a trout lily plant: It grows from a "corm," a little white egg-shaped lump that is pretty deep in the ground. That corm is something that you COULD eat, either cooked or raw. But you won?t want to dig it up. Each flowering trout lily that you see has taken SEVEN YEARS to grow before it got it?s first flower. When the seed starts to grow, nothing shows for the first two springs. Then each of the next 4 springs only one leaf will come up. You can see many of these plants in the colony here. Finally, on the seventh spring, the plant will send up 2 leaves and THIS time it will have a flower too.
Who is older, you or the trout lily you found in the woods?