Grow Dog’s Tooth Violet or Dog’s Tooth Lily

Grow Dog’s Tooth Violet or Dog’s Tooth Lily

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Dog’s tooth violets are lilies that grow wild in cool shady locations and flower in spring. They can be grown to good effect in your garden.

What is a Dog’s Tooth Violet

  • The dog tooth violet belongs to the genus Erythronium and is a type of lily not a violet.
  • It gets its common name from the white oblong corm that resembles a tooth and the flower which resembles a violet.
  • Other names include trout lily, snow lily, Fawn lily or an adder’s tongue.
  • Dog’s Tooth Violets grow in shady cool conditions and flower at their best during March & April.

Varieties of Dog’s Tooth Violet

    Erythronium californicum ‘White Beauty’ is the easiest Dog’s Tooth violet to grow with its white flowers and a yellow centre. It is a classic spring flowering bulb with their Turk’s cap flowers that are an eye catching white. They delight in a humus rich soil either acid or alkaline and are good in dappled shade under deciduous trees in a soil that dries out in Summer. They like growing in similar conditions to Snowdrops, Trilliums and Cyclamen with which they partner quite successfully.

    Erythronium revolutum     grows about 1 foot tall and has pink flowers. . The colour in this Dog’s Tooth Violet varies and it is worth getting a strongly coloured and vigorous form such as ‘Knightshayes’ Pink’. Buy seeds from Thompson & Morgan

    Japanese dog's tooth violet

    Erythronium ‘Pagoda’ is quite a vigorous hybrid which is easily grown with lemon yellow flowers and bronzed foliage. It has large leaf growth and looks a bit untidy after flowering but is amongst the best Dog’s Tooth Violet for trouble free growing. Citronella is another yellow variety to grow for naturalising.

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    Erythronium Dens Canis (Dog’s Teeth) can be bought in mixtures and are excellent for naturalising given the right conditions of moist partial shade. They tend to be lower growing than the other species mentioned above and are often found in the wild.

    If you want to know more about Erythronium they are well covered in Gardening with Woodlands Plants

    Read about Sweet Growing Violets
    Book Cover

    Dog Tooth Violets

    Credits
    Japanese dog’s tooth violet by kamonegi_jp CC BY-NC-ND 2.0
    Dog Tooth Violets by RobMan170 CC BY-NC-SA 2.0

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