White trout-lily

Erythronium albidum, commonly known as the white trout-lily, white fawnlily or white dogtooth violet, is a small spring-flowering perennial herb in the family Liliaceae native to eastern and central North America, where it grows in rich moist deciduous woodland and floodplain forest from Ontario and Minnesota south to Oklahoma and Georgia. It arises from a deep, slender, white scaly bulb to produce a pair of basal leaves 7 to 20 centimetres long that are elliptic to lanceolate, glossy and characteristically mottled with dull purplish-brown and silvery-green markings resembling the markings of a brook trout. In early to mid-spring flowering plants bear a single nodding, lily-shaped flower on a slender scape 10 to 20 centimetres tall, with six recurved tepals that are white to pale pinkish on the inside, often flushed lavender or pinkish outside, with prominent yellow anthers. Non-flowering plants form extensive colonies of single-leaved individuals that may take several years to reach flowering size. The fruit is a small three-valved capsule.