One of the highlights for me of attending Botany BC was this plant, large-flowered triteleia (some references may use large-flowered brodiaea, due to a synonymous scientific name, Brodiaea douglasii). I hadn't encountered it before, and to see it in large clusters of plants with a sagebrush background was mightily impressive. I later often encountered it in the Palouse hills, but in populations that were nowhere near as dense as these in the White Lake Grasslands Protected Area (photo of White Lake).
Triteleia grandiflora is a native of western North America; the Flora of North America account has a distribution map. The Plants for a Future database cites a source claiming it is “said by some people to be the tastiest of the North American edible bulbs” (making one wonder about those tasty inedible bulbs). In the southern interior of British Columbia, the bulbs were consumed by the Okanagan, Nlaka'pmx and St'at'imc peoples (source: Plants of Southern Interior BC).
The southwestern North American Themidaceae, including Triteleia, are closely related to the onion family, the Alliaceae.
Link of interest: Something I missed pointing out last week was that a demographic tipping point had been reached (symbolically) on May 23: the day the world's human population became more urban than rural.
Triteleia grandiflora - Z5 - RHS Index of Garden Plants, Griffiths
wonderful soft photos of this plant, Daniel. You must have been down on your belly to get these shots -- that's how I spend alot of my time when I'm out with the camera while my companions are far ahead on the trail. ;-)
Yes, on my belly or sitting down. That was one of the nice things about the field trips at Botany BC - they weren't "we must reach X by Y". Instead, they were move at your own pace and enjoy + learn about what you see.
BPOTD are my heroes
...Thank you for the fotos and the entry.
...It's wonderful to be able to comment.
~~~>Comment:
...These are quite edible, even when they have come up out of the ground.
...For most of us, this is when we learn, when we can see them and the blue flowers happening up the stem.
...Root digging is a little bit of a skill. They are in the ground. It is hard. They are delicate. A digging stick would be handy. Perhaps there's something in the tool shed?
...When you get it up, you will find what I've called the space ship on a platter.
...Fairly easily, the fibrous sheathing comes off and they are extremely white and beautiful.
...And they taste good. The older they are, the less they taste.
...The time to dig them as a food, that you might collect each year like going to the store, is before the green breaks ground, before they sprout out of the Earth. Then they are yet richest and offer tremendous vitality which they have prepped for the coming year's growth.
...They come up in patches and you can mark them when they're up for the next year, come back in the spring and dig up a bunch and eat some, thank you. There's some other things up there to be digging about that time, anyhow.