Sometimes....

...being a grad student is the best job in the world. I took this while at "work" this afternoon at Jockey Hollow.

Erythronium americanum

The trout lily. or fawn lily. or dogtooth violet. so called because the leaves are speckled like a trout or fawn and the corm is long and white like a tooth. Erythronium means red blood, and the genus was named for the red speckles on the down-turned flower. Many woodland wildflowers are extremely slow growing because their growing season is only a few weeks long. Since they live on the forest floor, they can only photosynthesize before the trees leaf out and filter out most of the sunlight. This plant is at least seven years old - that's how old they have to be (on average) before they can produce a flower. Once these are gone, it takes a long time to restore them.