Trout Lilies in the upstate of South Carolina — Eva Chandler State Heritage Preserve — 2014-03-08

In late February and early March, there is only one flowering plant that is easily recognizable in the upstate of South Carolina. That flower is the Trout Lily. In another week to ten days, we will see a number of spring ephemerals bloom in different locations in the area. But for now, the Trout Lily is what we have.

In her publication on Trout Lilies, “Trout Lily — Erythronium americanum”, Sarah Coulber states, “The common name Trout Lily arises from the appearance of its gray-green leaves mottled with brown or gray, which allegedly resemble the coloring of brook trout.” Many years ago, when I first photographed the leaves of this plant, I was amazed that the camera would not always focus properly on the leaves, since the pattern is muted and does not show a strong contrast within the marbled pattern.

At this point, I have to offer two apologies: 1.) One of my most recent blog entries highlighted Trout Lilies (from southwest Georgia) so you are getting another dose of them, 2.) I cannot reliably identify the botanical name of the ones I photographed today. They are either Erythronium americanum (American Trout Lily) or Erythronium umbilicatum (Dimpled Trout Lily). It’s much easier to differentiate between the two species by inspecting the resulting seed capsule. Since it is too early to find seed capsules on these, I’ll have to defer for now…

The day was cloudless, so I wanted to experiment with photographing the flowers in conditions that could easily lead to harsh shadows, even in the middle of the leafless woods. I figured late afternoon would provide better light, so I headed out after lunch. I did not use a fill flash at all today. What I used to create fill light to counteract the strong shadows was a silver reflector. I have a round, collapsible, silver reflector made just for the purpose of directing fill light, but you can easily make one by using a piece of heavy cardboard and cover it with aluminum foil. Both are equally effective. Just make sure you wrinkle the aluminum foil before you cover the cardboard. This helps diffuse the reflected sunlight.

Here is a shot of one of the many Trout Lily plants sprouting up through the leaf litter in this flood plain near a small creek. That dark background is actually the creek water in shadow:

Usually, strong sunlight is annoying to photographers because it creates strong shadows, but on some few occasions, something nice happens. In the image below, the sunlight actually casts a wonderful silhouette on the leaf next to the flower bud. These happen very infrequently, so to see something like this makes the whole day.

Here is another one taken a couple of years ago:

Back over by the creek, I saw another opportunity to photograph a couple of plants with the creek as the background:

As you can easily see, some of the flowers have tepals that almost touch as they recurve when fully open. Others have tepals that are almost horizontal and do not recurve fully. I believe there is a link between the age of the flowers and how fully the tepals recurve — newly open flowers tend not to be as recurved as those flowers which have opened on several consecutive days. Just a guess on my part, since I have not observed them over a period of time. The flowers open in strong sunlight. On cloudy days, the flowers stay closed or do not open fully.

The flowers at this location also show some variability in color. The sepals are often darker than the petals, but this is not always the case. On the image below left, the sun shining through the sepals provides a golden orange color to the sepals. On the image below right, the outside of the sepals is a rich, brownish red and the petals have brownish red streaks and spots on the upper side:

Finally, just a few more shots of these pretty flowers. Notice the variable color of the stamens. Some are reddish brown; some are yellow, and some are tan:

I’m looking forward to the full return of Spring. It has been peeking around the corner for a couple of weeks, but we have been known to have a killing frost as late as mid-April. I’m keeping my fingers crossed that the delicate spring ephemerals will survive to bloom as they have for eons. Stay tuned to this space…

–Jim