Flower:

A single, nodding flower at the end of a stiff naked stalk 4 to 7 inches (10 to 18 cm) long. Flowers have 6 lance-elliptic tepals (3 petals and 3 similar sepals) ¾ to 1 1/3 inch (20 to 33 mm) long, yellow sometimes tinged purplish on the outer surface and/or have reddish dots in the throat. There are 6 long stamens in the center, usually with deep rusty red tips (anthers), or sometimes yellow. Flowers open in the morning, the tepals flaring out and back, and close up at night.

Leaves:

Leaves are all basal, flowering plants with a pair of leaves and non-flowering plants with one. Leaves are lance-elliptic to oval to egg-shaped, 3 to 9 inches (to 23 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. Color is waxy blue-green irregularly mottled with purplish brown, the mottling typically fading with age.

Fruit:

Fruit is a capsule, oval to inverted egg-shaped, rounded at the tip end, about ½ inch (12 to 15 mm) long at maturity, usually held erect. 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.

Notes:

Leaves are very similar to Minnesota's other two Trout Lilies (E. albidum and E. propullans) though some of the images here were taken at Eloise Butler Wildflower Garden in Minneapolis, where both leaves with pale green mottling and flowers with yellow anthers were on display (the source of these plants is not known). Like the other Trout Lily species, the yellow is most common in rich woods and on flood plains, the leaves appearing by early April and completely gone by June, and can form large colonies. There are 2 recognized subspecies in North America: subsp. harperi, which has a limited range in a few southeastern states, has a minute point at the tip of a capsule; subsp. americanum has the rounded capsule described here and is found from the easternmost counties of Minnesota eastward and as far south as northern Alabama.