This single, nodding flower was lucky compared to its fellow Yellow Adder’s Tongue which was eaten off by a deer and only the lower part of the twin leaves remain. Only when the plant’s corm becomes large enough, the second leaf and blossom will appear. I have a several patches of the Adder’s Tongues but very few have a blossom as the area they are growing in are not as fertile soil as it needs to be so all single leaves. So it isn’t nice when the deer eat one of the few blossoms I get.

I learned the name Adder’s Tongue for Erythronium americanum, and it is in reference to the tongue-like shape of the flowering shoot as it rises up in spring and the supposed resemblance of the flower to the open mouth of a snake. Another common name for the flower is Trout Lily for the similarity between the leaf markings and those of the brown or brook trout. Some other names are Fawn Lily because of spotted leaves and the two leaves being fawn ears and the misleading Dog-tooth Violet name, since it is not a member of the violet family, but named for the corm resembling dog teeth.

Lone Yellow Adder’s Tongue