9/1/2014 12:51 PM
Many of the photos of each of these incipient
plant-photo-biographies were taken April
Bresgal. It seems that even more of these photos than usual are April’s. I have done all of the photo processing. Z
Bresgal. It seems that even more of these photos than usual are April’s. I have done all of the photo processing. Z
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Camassia quamash, blue camas, Indian hyacinth
Native
Monocot
10
20
30
Family Problems:
Burke says the family is Asparagaceae - the Asparagus
family.
USDA says family Liliaceae
North American Native Plant Society says traditionally it is
in the Lily Family. Recently the Lily Family was subdivided in to several groups.
Camassia are included in the ‘hyacinth group’. Some authors call it a separate
family, the Hyacinthaceae.
Wikipedia seems to have Asparagaceae as the family,
Scilloiedeae as the sub-family and Scilloideae considered to be the Hyacinth
Family by some authorities. I guess all of the species of Asparagaceae were
once in the Lily Family.
Oh, well.
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9/6/2014 6:29 PM
Leaves
The leaves are all basal. They look grass-like but are
rather broad. They are keeled.
040
050
Their basal leaves grow from a deep bulb.
060
The leaves have the parallel veins of monocots.
070
The leaves are not very nutritious but are browsed.
080
Flower Stalk
The flower stalk [the peduncle] is called a scape because it
has no leaves.
090
It rises about twice the height of the leaves.
100
It has a stout stem
110
Inflorescence
The flower stalk has a raceme at the top. Botanists
characterize a raceme as an ‘indeterminate’ inflorescence. I will say that a
raceme has a ‘leading bud’ that blooms and ‘falls to the side,’ becoming a
flower on a lateral branch [pedicle].
120
Buds continue to open at the top of the flower stalk evolving
into lateral flowers. It’s interesting that the green ovary is prominent as
soon as the flowers open. It looks to be a smooth oval when the flower opens
and to become angular as it matures. But that doesn’t seem to be consistent in
my photographs. Watch for it next year.
The flowers wither and ‘go to seed’ below the blossoms at
the top of the flower stalk. So, fresh flowers at the top, withered flowers
below. The withered tepals are long persisting on fruiting branches.
130
140
The pedicles [short lateral flower stalks] of the flowers
curl back to the main flower stalk in fruit stage.
150
160
Botanists say the indeterminate process is ‘theoretically’
endless. But there is a practical stopping point. The clusters of flowers only
get about so big. They don’t say what the stopping point is or why it is … none
of them that I have read.
Flowers
The flower parts, as with most monocots, are in multiples of
three. There look to be three stigma so there must be three styles fused. There
are 6 stamen. There are 6 tepals. [No apparent petals or sepals.] The tepals
are not symmetrical. There are 5 tepals above and one tepal below. Sources say
the lower tepal curves out and down.
William Clark, 1806
“the corolla consists
of five long oval obtusely pointed Skye blue or water coloured petals…five of
them are placed near each other pointing upwards while one stands
horizon[tally], or pointing downwards.”
Another source:
6 tepals, in Camassia genus nearly all identical. Blue camas
is unique in the genus with flowers that are slightly irregular, lowest tepal
separated from the others and curving outward from the stem.
170
180
190
200
210
There are occasional plants with white flowers. I’m sure the
flowers in these photos looked white to the eye. C. quamash has a lot of local
variation and there is regional variation in the flower’s shade of blue or
violet.
220
225
Distinguishing death camas from blue camas – death camas: flowers
and subsequent capsules are bunched at the top. Flowers and capsules come
farther down the flower stalk on Camassia quamash, blue camas. Unfortunately
the two species are found together and the time for harvesting them is after
flowering is over when identification of death camas is unlikely. The bulbs of
death camas are slightly smaller but not significantly. First Americans would
‘weed’ death camas from their patch of blue camas while they were in bloom. In
at least some tribes the patches were ‘owned’ and tended by a family down
through the generations.
227
There are bracts under the flowers that are often longer
than the pedicels.
230
The photo below seems to show anthers in different stages of
development. Time for another, ‘I’ll do better next year’, sorry.
It looks like the anthers have fallen off or been knocked
off the filaments of three of the stamen. One anther seems to be opening. One,
out of focus, seems to have its pollen fully exposed. I wish we could see the
other side of the anther in the sharp focus.
The blue style and stigma are not in focus but you can see
the three branches of the stigma curling away from the 3 fused styles. I am
surprised that there is no sign of pollen on the stigma.
240
Something to watch for next year. The gray structures on the
left side of the photo might be supports for anthers or the might be anthers
that never developed.
250
These must be mature anthers.
260
270
A stamen apparently attached at the base of a tepal.
280
Two views of the pistil. [The Pistil of C. quamash is made
up of three carpels. The carpel is the ovary, the style and the stigma. I’m a
little confused about the language. The ovary of C. quamash has three
compartments. I suppose each carpel has only one compartment of the ovary.
Help!]
290
In the photo below the stigma is out of focus but it looks
yellowish so I suppose it is covered with pollen.
300
The withered anthers seem ‘complete’, not bare as in 250 so
the gray structures are still a mystery. Maybe they never developed anthers.
310
Fruits
The fruits are 3 part capsules. [They were ovaries only a
moment ago.] They are barrel-shaped to three-angled. They split into three
parts to release many black seeds.
[A capsule is formed from two or more carpels. [Yeah, right.
Like the pistil.] It usually splits apart at maturity. [It is dehiscent]. It is
common in many members of the Liliaceae family for the capsule to split into
cells along the midrib or dorsal suture of the locules. [It is loculicidal.]
Other capsules split at different locations.] [A locule is a chamber within an
ovary. An ovary may have one locule or several locules. Locules are chambers
containing seeds. C. quamash has three locules. [Are we or are we not back at
the ovary again?]
320
330
340
350
360
Notice that the pedicels of the flower have curved upward
holding the fruit against the stem. Now we call them fruit pedicels.
370
The yellow color must indicate that the fruit is drying.
380
Camassia exhibits high variability in seed number per locule
with up to twelve seeds
390
The capsules are not deciduous. [They don’t fall off the
plant.] The fruiting pedicels are mostly in-curling and erect but some are
spreading.
400
410
Open capsules with their three locules containing black
seeds. [Dry ovaries.]
420
Black seeds of Camassia quamash
430
Bulbs
The bulb of C. quamash is the means for this perennial plant
to persist. Often Liliaceae family plants reproduce by producing ‘offsets’, clusters
of bulbs beside the bulb of the plant. Other sources say offsets are also
shoots that develop from the base of the plant to create new plants.
One source say C. quamash does not reproduce by offsets or
shoots. It reproduces by seeds. Another source says it reproduces by offsets.
Yet another does ‘Yeah but ..’ much less than 1% of ‘a wild population’ produce
offsets. Several sources comment that C. quamash reproduces readily [in your
garden] by seeds.
I have not and probably will not dig up a bulb to photograph.
That could change.
The bulb is variously described as having a thin tunic,
being covered with black bark [The National Museum of Natural History] and
being chestnut brown, partially covered by a coarser black tunic.
A website called ‘hunter angler gardener cook’, on a page
called ‘Blue Camas and Other Edible Bulbs’ has a photo of four Camassia quamash
bulbs and interesting reports of personal experiences digging the bulbs. It’s
hard. The author gave up after 4.
Maybe the site is called ‘honest food’?
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The gardeners tell us that if you want your bulbs to flower
next spring, they have to be 3-5 years old. Older bulbs are deeper in the
ground.
Some gardeners might see C. quamash as invasive. It is
compared to grape hyacinth in that respect. It is apparently related to grape
hyacinth.
Another source says 2 years, seed to maturity.
Root
Root is fibrous [common characteristic of monocots]
A few miscellaneous remarks
from my sources
There’s a lot of stuff about Lewis & Clarke and even
more about First Americans cultivating gathering and processing C. quamash. And
there are lots more disagreements. Far too much interesting stuff to report
here. Google will find it for you.
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Many sources suggest that First Americans who traveled to
harvest C. quamash extended its range by planting it in their home territories.
But one study says, rather minimally, that they could find no evidence that it
grows beyond its natural range.
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Archeology claims to have found camas ovens and charred
bulbs from 7,750 years ago in Oregon .
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Camas provided protein as well as carbohydrates to the diet.
Slightly better source of protein than acorns, 7%.
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The bulbs are rich in an indigestible carbohydrate, inulin
which is converted to usable fructose by slow cooking. Camas is pit roasted for
24 to 36 hours. Raw camas 0.5% ‘reducing’ sugar. Cooked camas, 43%.
When eaten raw or only
partially cooked, the plants can produce substantial amounts of intestinal gas,
as Captain Lewis eloquently noted: “…when in the Indian hut I was almost blown
out by the strength of the wind.”
After eating raw camas, white, slimy, glutinous, Lewis and
Clark people likened them to the taste of soap. They were starved when they
arrived on Weippe prairie, ate too much and got sick.
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Cooked and dried bulbs were second in importance only
to smoked salmon as a trade item.
Annual camas harvests provided opportunities for intertribal
trade and socialization at potlatches and feasts. For this reason, women collected
camas in larger quantities than they needed for their own families or tribal
unit. Nez Perce women typically gathered 50 to 60 pounds a day, with records as
high as 80 to 90 pounds.
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To dig camas bulbs and then
render them edible required a large amount of labour, performed almost entirely
by women. While a man’s attractiveness as a potential husband was based
partially on his success at hunting and fishing, a woman was valued for her
ability to gather volumes of camas bulbs. An average day of harvest may have
yielded a bushel of the bulbs, and it has been estimated that one woman with a
digging stick could harvest as many as two tons (2,000 kilograms) of bulbs in a
year.
See above. A California ‘white eyes’ gave up after
digging 4 bulbs. Too hard.
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David Douglas:
First, a large fire was
built in the pit, heating the stones thoroughly. Then the fire was removed, and
up to a hundred pounds (45 kilograms) or more of bulbs were piled in its place.
Sometimes other plants, including red alder (Alnus rubra) or madrone(Arbutus menziesii) bark, were added to give the
cooked product a reddish colour, and black lichens (Bryoria spp.)
could be added to raise its value for trade. The bulbs were then covered and a
fire was built again on top. Baking may have extended for up to two days.
I recognize this plant. I like photos 200, 210 & 290
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