Nine-leaved Desert Parsley

Nine-leaved Desert Parsley

Lomatium triternatum

Apiaceae (Parsley Family)

Quick ID:  

Look for Nine-leaved Desert parsley blooming now in dry, open sites around Missoula (check out the face of Mt. Sentinel, or low on Waterworks).  It's a small herbaceous perennial with yellow clumps of flowers, growing low to the ground.  The leaves, which smell like parsley, are delicate wisps, deeply divided into long strings that always remind me of veins. 

Cous (pronounced "cowse") Biscuitroot

Lomatium is highly typical of the charismatic Apiaceae family:  deeply dissected, aromatic leaves and big chunky taproots.  Remind you of a carrot?  Our other native Lomatiums -Fern-leaved Desert Parsley (L. dissectum) and Cous Biscuitroot (L. cous) - show the same basic characteristics.

Fern-leaved Desert Parsley in fruit

The clumps of flowers (aka inflorescences) of Apiaceae are known as "umbels" and resemble an upside-down umbrella, with many short flower stalks (called pedicels) arising from a common point.  Think of the familiar umbels of flowering dill in your herb garden.  

Daucus carota (Queen Anne's Lace) displays a quintessential umbel infloresence

Range:

Common throughout the northwest, east to the Dakotas.  Click here for MT range map

What's in a Name?  

Lomatium is the diminutive of the Greek root Loma, "border, fringe" in reference to its winged fruits (similar to those of Lomatium macrocarpum, pictured here.  Ternatum is a Latin term meaning "in clusters of three", thus, triternatum gives us the three threes of nine-leaved desert parsley. Also frequently called "Biscuitroot."

Tidbits:  All species of Lomatium are edible, but not to be confused with their extremely poisonous cousins, the Hemlocks (Cicuta and Conium species).  The tuber-like root tastes a bit like sweet parsnips, and can be dried and ground into a flour for biscuits and bread.  It was a staple food for Lewis and Clark, who knew it as chappalell according to their May 1806 journal entries:

"This plain as usual is covered with arromatic shrubs, hurbatious plants and a short grass...there is one which produces a root somewhat like the sweet pittaitoe."

"This root they collect as early as the snows disappear in the spring and continue to collect it untill the quawmash supplys it's place which happens about the latter end of June"...

Wild gardening:  An early spring wildflower with high drought tolerance and low fertility needs.  Members of the Apiaceae family are great companion plants, attracting ladybugs, parasitic wasps and predatory flies that prey on insect pests.

Rocky Mountain Douglasia

Rocky Mountain Douglasia
Douglasia montana
Primulaceae (Primrose Family)

What's in a Name?
There are 11 species of "Dwarf Primrose" in the genus Douglasia, named after the Scottish collector for the Horticultural Society of London, David Douglas.  Douglas came to Oregon in 1825 on a botanical expedition, and ended up introducing many Pacific Coast plants to English gardens.  He was killed at the age of 36 in a bizarre accident in Hawaii where he fell into a wild-cattle pit.  Reading through old accounts of such wild nineteenth century expeditions, one gets the feeling botany was once a much more dangerous sport than it is now.

Quick ID:
Look for dense cushions blooming now on rocky foothill slopes, and through July in higher alpine areas.  The foliage is lance-shaped with tiny teeth, and often hidden behind masses of bean-sized flowers.  The rosy-pink blooms are borne singly or doubly on short (1") upright stems.

Easy to mistake for a common companion, Silene acaulis (Moss Campion, left) but look close and you'll see the difference.  Douglasia petals are fused to form a tube at the base, whereas moss campion's only appear to be tubular.  The stamens and style of Douglasia are hidden within the petal tube, while Silene's flare out beyond the petals.

Range:  Found only in Montana, Idaho, Wyoming and the Waterton Lakes area of Alberta.

Tidbits:
The resourceful David Douglas is credited as one of the greatest botanical explorers of his time, introducing some 240 plants to Britain.  Among these were Flowering Currant, Penstemon and Lupine, as well as Ponderosa, Lodgepole and Western White Pine, Sitka Spruce, Grand Fir, and many other conifers that transformed the British landscape and timber industry.
He was memorialized in the naming of the Douglas Fir, considered to be the most commercially important tree in Western North America.  The scientific name of Doug Fir, Psuedotsuga menziesii, honors a rival botanist, Archibald Menzies.  A naval surgeon, Menzies was long remembered by Hawaiians as "the red-faced man who cut off the limbs of men and gathered grass."

Wild Gardening:
If you're going to try growing Douglasia from seed, collect them when the mature, dry capsules split open (late summer).  Like many seeds, they need to go through several months of winter temperatures in order to germinate (a process known as cold stratification).

The Native Plant Nursery at Glacier National Park reports that their seeds germinate the second spring after planting, and develop strong root systems shortly thereafter.
Douglasia makes a nice, creeping addition to rock gardens.  Space 9-12" apart in full sun.  Once established, plants are very cold- and drought-tolerant.  Grow them in scree (broken rock) conditions or in an alpine trough like this awesome one here.

This blog post was originally created for the Montana Natural History Center. View the original post here

Yellowbells

Yellowbells

Fritillaria pudica

Liliaceae (Lily Family)

Quick ID:  

Okay, so this one's easy.  Look for those little yellow bells, of course!  Watch where you step; they're low-growing (~3"), their faces turn down, and they're blooming now through May.  The flowers can be darker near the base, with six tepals (the name for petals and sepals that are structurally the same) and a few blunt-tipped, strap-like leaves.

If you dug them up (which you wouldn't, because it would destroy the whole plant and decimate our wildflower population, and you LOVE wildflowers...), you'd find a scaly little corm (swollen, bulb-like thing) with little corm-lettes the size of rice grains attached.  If you leave them be, these little baubles (technically called cormels) will grow into new yellowbells...and the more the merrier where these nodding sweeties are concerned.

Liliaceae family members are characterized by leaves with parallel veins (like a grass, as oposed to palmate veins, like a maple leaf), basal leaves (growing from the base of the stem) and flower parts in 3s (in this case, 3 petals and 3 sepals jointly called tepals).  

Range:

Grows from sea level up to 5000'; common throughout the northwest in short grass- and sagebrush prairie and conifer forests, with one of the widest distributions in the Fritillaria genus.

 What's in a Name?  

Fritillaria is from the Latin word for "dicebox", which makes sense when you look at the Snake's Head Lily, F. meleagris (right).  The species pudica means "bashful"--the classic, modest "Venus pudica" pose is well-known in the art world.

Tidbits:  The corms of yellowbells are edible raw (tastes like potato) or cooked (tastes like rice).  Many western North American tribes picked and ate them along with Bitterroot (Lewisia rediviva), but they were never regarded as a major source of sustenance.  The starchy corms also provide food for black and grizzly bears, pocket gophers and ground squirrels.

The flower is said to smell sweet as an Easter Lily, but this particular floraphile has never gotten her nose close enough to the ground to take a sniff.  Maybe this spring...  

                                                 
Wild gardening:

As with many yellow flowers, Fritillaria pudica is pollinated by bees, as well as beetles and flies.  It would do well in a naturalized prairie-lawn, as long as it wasn't dominated by larger plants, or would be particularly nice in a raised "miniatures" bed.  Keep it in full sun to part shade, reasonably moist in spring and bone dry during its summer dormancy. 
Yellowbells are among the first plants to bloom after the snow melts, but their flowers fade fast, the petals blushing deep red and curling backwards.  Their short-lived nature only adds to their charm, as tends to happen with quick bouts of lovliness.  As Ms. Dickinson pointed out,

To see the summer sky is poetry

           though never in a book it lie...

                              True poems flee

 This blog post was originally created for the Montana Natural History Center.  Check out the original post here