Erythronium Americanum. Adder's Tongue; Dog-tooth Violet.

Ywllow Snowdrop, Rattlesnake Violet.

Description: Natural Order, Liliaceae. This little plant is noticed early in the Spring, sending up a single stem from a tuberous root that lies several inches in the ground; the stem clasped by two sheathing and dull-green leaves, lanceolate, large, quite unequal in size, and peculiarly marked with irregular brownish-purple spots; the stem being really a scape, rising from four to six inches, and bearing on its top a single large nodding flower, of an open and recurved bell-shape, of which the three outer segments are yellow marked with purplish-red, and the three inner quite a clear yellow. It is common in all parts of the country.

Properties and Uses: The root is reputed antiscorbutic; but I have never found it any thing more than demulcent and eatable when dry, and acrid when fresh. The chief object in introducing it here at all, is to let the botanical description serve to distinguish it from another and quite different plant with the same common name–Goodyera pubescens.

The Physiomedical Dispensatory, 1869, was written by William Cook, M.D.
It was scanned by Paul Bergner at http://medherb.com