Category: Lomatium

Ethnobotany. A food for the Montana, Oregon, Nez-Percé and the Okanagan-Colville Peoples. The spring roots were reduced to flour for future use or eaten fresh. With the Oregon People, the roots were eaten at the first feast of the new year which was called the Root Feast. According to Turner, Nancy J., R. Bouchard and Dorothy I.D. Kennedy in “Ethnobotany of the Okanagan-Colville Indians of British Columbia and Washington, Victoria” (1980); according to Murphey, Edith Van Allen in “Indian Uses of Native Plants” (1959); according to Jeff Hart in “Montana Native Plants and Early Peoples” and according to Blankinship, J. W. in “Native Economic Plants of Montana, Bozeman” (1905). It was named “racine blanche” by the French speaking Canadians. It was the second most important root for the Nez-Percé – the first being camas. They traded their Lomatium cous with the Flathead who did not enjoy this larger and more abundant biscuitroot – Lomatium cous being the most abundant edible lomatium in the northern Rocky Mountains region and one of the three main root staples, for the Native Peoples, with Camassia  quamash and Lewisia rediviva. 

The Native People dug the plants in the springtime, just after blooming. They peeled them to eat them fresh or boiled. Some of the roots were sun-dried and the rest was pulverized in a mush to make long cakes which were suspended on a frame of sticks to be partly baked above a fire. They were pierced with a hole to be attached to the horse-saddles. When properly dried and prepared, the biscuitroot cakes could keep for up to 2 years.

David French and Eugene Hunn in their monography “Lomatium: a key resource for the Columbia Plateau Native Subsistence” (1981) explained that Lomatium cous was one the main 10 species of eaten Lomatium providing 30 % of the root food resources of the Native Peoples of Sahaptin languages in the north-west of the USA. In 1981, only 29 species of Lomatium were botanically described, for the Sahaptin spoken range, but most of them were known (if not named) by these Native Peoples – well the survivors as some of the Native Peoples of Sahaptin languages are extinct. Lomatium cous was named “x̣áwš” in Sahaptin language and “qáamsit” (when fresh) and “qáaws” (when peeled and dried) in Nez-Percé language. The roots of Lomatium cous weigh in average 10 grams and one kilogram of fresh roots provide 1270 kcal. David French and Eugene Hunn calculated that a woman would need 400 hours of work to gather all the roots of Lomatium cous necessary for one year to sustain her family. 

Description. The plants of that species of tuberous lomatium are acaulescent or caulescent and 10 to 35 cm high at maturity. The roots, of black color, are elongate and slender or, sometimes, tuberous – and up to 8 cm in length and 4 cm in width. The leaf blades are 2 to 14 cm long, glabrous, glaucous and often scaberulous and their general outline is oblong to obovate. The leaves are ternately or pinnately divided and dissected – the ultimate leaf segments being linear, 1 to 12 mm long and 0,5 to 3 mm wide with mucronulate or apiculate apices. The green to purple tinged petioles are sheathing for half of the length of the basal leaves and only at the base of the cauline leaves. The inflorescence is a glabrous to scaberulous umbel consisting of 5 to 20 rays which are 1 to 11 cm long. The bracts (4 to 12) are free or fused on a little segment of their length, narrowly to broadly obovate, 2 to 5 mm long and 1 to 3 mm wide. Each umbellet consists of 10 to 20 flowers which are all yellow: petals, anthers and stylopodia (punctuated by small vacities). The ovaries are glabrous to granular. The oblong to broadly elliptic fruits, with a lingulate cross-section, are 5-12 mm long and 2-6 mm wide and possess 1 to 4 oil canals in the intervals and 4 to 7 oil canals in the commissures. Their pedicels are 1-5 mm long at maturity. Their lateral wings are 0,4 to 1,7 mm wide.

Description. Perennial species with one to several flower scapes rising 10-30 cm high from a cluster of basal leaves and from an elongate taproot and usually simple, subterranean crown. The foliage is glaucous. The leaves are pinnately or ternate-pinnately once to twice compound – the ultimate segments being leaf-like, toothed or cleft. The flowers are white, yellow or ochroleucous. The inflorescence is an umbel composed of 4 to 16 rays of 2-7 cm of length. The pedicels are 2-15 mm long. The fruits are dark purplish in color, oblong to broadly elliptic, 6-16 mm long with the wings equaling or narrower than the body and with prominent dorsal and intermediate ribs.

Description from the California Native Plant Society. It is an uncommon species known by the common name Howell’s biscuitroot, or Howell’s lomatium. It is native to the Klamath Mountains of southern Oregon and northern California, where it is a member of the local serpentine soils flora. It is a perennial herb growing up to 80 centimeters tall from a thick, branching taproot. It often lacks a stem, producing upright flower clusters and leaves from ground level. The long leaves may exceed a meter long and are each made up of many oval or rounded toothed leaflets. The flower cluster is an umbel of small yellow or purplish flowers.

Ethnobotany. The roots of  Lomatium piperi have been used as a food by the Paiute according to “Ethnobotany of the Oregon Paiutes of the Warm Springs Indian Reservation” (Mahar, James Michael., 1953).

Description from the Vascular Plants of the University of Washington. General: Low, glabrous perennial from a globose-thickened taproot, with each stem bearing at least one cauline leaf, 10-25 cm. tall. Leaves: Leaves few, bi-ternately compound and pinnately-ternately dissected; petiole slender, sheathing, green or purplish tinged; leaf blades oblong to ovate in outline, 1.5-5.5 cm. long, glabrous; ultimate leaf segments 10-30, linear, 0.2-4 mm. long. Thickened root 0.5-1 cm. in diameter, brown, smooth. Flowers: Umbels usually 2, one terminal, the other borne in the axil of the single leaf; rays 3-10, 1.5-3.5 cm. long; involucre none; involucel bractlets 2-6, narrowly elliptic, 0.5-2 mm. long; calyx obsolete; flowers white, with purple anthers; pedicels 0.5-2.5 mm. long. Fruits: Fruit ovate, 4-9 mm. long and 2.5-5 mm. wide, the lateral wings the width of the body.

Distinguishing Characteristics: Compared to Lomatium piperi, Lomatium gormanii has no stem leaves, the globose root is covered with rootlets, and the wing on the fruit is narrow.

Ethnobotany. Lomatium californicum has been used by the Karok, Kawaiisu, Poliklah, Yuki and Yurok People. Among the Karok, the roots were eaten raw or smoked in the pipe according to “Karok Ethnobotany” (Schenck, Sara M. and E. W. Gifford, 1952) and “The Ethnobotany of the Yurok, Tolowa and Karok Indians of Northwest California,” (Baker, Marc A., 1981). Among the Kawaiisu, the roots were used as an emetic, to treat cold and sore throats and for gastrointestinal pathologies according to “Kawaiisu Ethnobotany” (Zigmond, Maurice L., 1981). They ate also the young leaves in the springtime. According to Merriam C. Hart in “Ethnographic Notes on California Indian Tribes” (1966), it was the most sacred plant with the Poliklah. Among the Yuki, it was used to treat colds and as moxa, to ease arthritic pains. They, too, ate the young shoots. The Yuki, moreover, considered this plant as a magical plant : they rubbed their neck to ward off disease and rattlesnake, they put pieces of roots in the pockets for good luck and they chewed it to distract the deer, during the hunt, from the human smell – according to “Some Plants Used by the Yuki Indians” (Curtin, L. S. M., 1957).

Description.

Ethnobotany. Many species of Lomatium have been used as food or as medicine by the First Peoples of North America. 

Description by the Jepson. Plant 1–4.5 dm; taproot stout; herbage green, finely scabrous to nearly glabrous. Stem leafy. Leaf: petiole 2–12 cm, widely sheathing basally; blade 5–15 cm, oblong-ovate to triangular-ovate, ternate-pinnately or pinnately dissected, segments crowded, 1–5 mm, oblong, obtuse; cauline leaves like basal, sheaths flared. Inflorescence: peduncle 2.5–25 cm; bractlets 5–10, 3–7 mm, generally lanceolate to oblanceolate, acute, ± scarious; rays 10–15, 2–7 cm, spreading-ascending, unequal, ± webbed; pedicels 5–15 mm, webbed. Flower: corolla yellow; ovary generally roughened. Fruit 8–15 mm, oblong to elliptic, generally roughened; wings generally > body in width; oil tubes per rib-interval 1–4. Chromosomes: 2n=22. Ecology: Sagebrush, grassy slopes, pine woodland. Elevation: 600–1900 m. . Bioregional distribution: Klamath Ranges, North Coast Ranges (serpentine), Modoc Plateau . Distribution outside California: c Oregon, w Nevada