Erythronium L.

Herbs, perennial, scapose, from ovate to elongate bulbs, sometimes with small, beadlike segments of short, persistent rhizome attached; several species producing additional bulbs as sessile bulbels or at the ends of slender stolons or vertical droppers, these species typically flowering more sparingly than those without extensive vegetative reproduction. Leaves 2 (1 in nonflowering plants), basal, ± petiolate; blade green or mottled with purple, brown, or white, lanceolate to ovate (wider if solitary), flat to folded, 6–60 cm, glaucous in a few species, glabrous, base narrowed gradually or abruptly to petiole, margins entire or sometimes wavy. Scape green or sometimes reddish, typically elongating in fruit. Inflorescences terminal, racemose, 1–10-flowered. Flowers showy, usually nodding, sometimes held laterally or erect; tepals 6 (as few as 4 in E. propullans), spreading to reflexed, distinct, similar, white, yellow, pink, or violet, often with basal zone of yellow or other colors, lanceolate to ovate, inner tepals auriculate at base in many species, auricles appressed to ovary and forming sac-or pocketlike hollows on adaxial surfaces; stamens 6; filaments generally slender; ovary superior; style 1, abruptly attached to ovary (or forming a beak in E. rostratum); stigma unlobed or 3-lobed, lobes recurved to erect. Fruits capsular, erect, obovoid to oblong, apex rounded, truncate, or umbilicate (beaked in E. rostratum), dehiscence loculicidal. Seeds brown, ± angular, ± ovoid. x = 11, 12.