Handbook of Nature-Study · Lesson CXVIII · Topic 19: Spring wildflowers of the woods
118. The adder's tongue, or dog-tooth violet
Goal: Your child finds a patch of adder's tongue, explains why the spotted leaves grow crowded together, and describes the nodding lily-bell and its stamen “clapper.”
You'll need
- Nature notebook, pencil and colored pencils
- A hand lens (magnifying glass)
- Colored pencils in green, purple-brown and yellow
What's in the book
A Teacher's Story about this little woodland lily (also called trout lily), with a drawing of the plant and its corm deep underground, followed by the lesson: Leading thought, Method and eight questions.
The lesson, step by step
When and where
Look in April and May in rich, moist woods, often in the same places as hepaticas. The mottled leaves cover the ground in patches; only a few plants in a patch carry a flower.
Before you go, make sure your child can spot poison ivy: three leaflets on each leaf ("leaves of three, let it be"), often climbing as a hairy vine or growing as a low patch.
The leading thought
The adder's tongue is a lily, and its mottled leaves appear early in the spring, each pair coming from a corm deep in the soil below.
Patches of leaves
Where does the adder's tongue grow? Do you ever find it in open fields? How early do you find its leaves above ground?
How many leaves has each plant? What colors do you find in them?
Do the adder's tongue plants occur singly or in patches?
Comstock asks the children to dig up a plant to see why. Instead, look at her drawing of the corm in the book: a swollen underground stem that makes little corms around it, and each little corm makes a new plant. That is why they grow in crowds.
The lily-bell
Find a flowering plant and kneel down to look up into the bell.
Is the flower lifted up, or is it drooping? What is its general shape?
If the perianth, or the sepals and petals together, make a bell-shaped flower, what makes the clapper to the bell?
Do the flowers stay open nights and dark days? Why?
The clapper is the six stamens hanging down. A bee has to cling to them while reaching up for nectar.
Say it back
Ask your child to explain the two ways the adder's tongue spreads.
SayTell me how a new adder's tongue plant can start. Is there more than one way?
Nature notebook
Draw a pair of mottled leaves and the nodding yellow flower from the side. Label the sepals, petals and the clapper of stamens.
Afterwards
Return in early summer: by midsummer the leaves have disappeared. Ask what happened to them and where the plant's food is now (in the corm underground).
Tip
Comstock suggests digging a plant for school. Please don't: woodland wildflowers should be left where they grow. The book's drawing shows the corm well.
Answers to the book's problems
It spreads underground by little corms (cormels) that grow from the larger corm, and by seeds. The clapper of the bell is the group of six stamens.
Worked out for this site from the scan. If a number in your copy differs, trust the book.