LILY FAMILY 
LILIACEAE 
WILD HYACINTH 
Camassia esculenta (Ker) Robinson 
The bulbs of this and related species are commonly 
called Quamash and are edible. The plant is easily cul- 
tivated and the Indians used it extensively as food. 
Members of the Lewis and 
Clark expedition saved their 
lives by eating Quamash when 
their food supply ran out. 
Wild Hyacinth is found in 
moist prairies and meadows and 
sometimes in. open woods from 
Pennsylvania to Minnesota and 
south to Georgia and Texas, and 
should be carefully distinguished 
from the larger-flowered plant of 
the northwest. The bulb is 1-1% 
inches high and its outer coat is 
nearly black. The flower stalk is 
1-2 feet high and sometimes bears 
I or 2 short, narrow, nearly color- 
less leaves. The foliage leaves are 
all basal, grasslike and somewhat 
shorter than the stalk. 
The pale blue. flowers, blooming 
in April and May, are produced in 
a rather open raceme 3-8 inches 
long when in flower and longer in 
fruit. Each is borne in the axil of a 
bract. Bracts, pedicels and peri- 
anth segments are all about three- 
quarters of an inch long. The 6 
stamens, attached. by slender fila- 
ments to the bases of the narrowly oblong, 3-5-nerved perianth 
segments, are somewhat shorter than the latter. The pistil 
consists of a sessile ovary, a slender style and a 3-lobed stigma. 
Numerous black, roundish and shining seeds are in each cell of 
the short, thick, 3-angled capsule the 3 valves of which are 
transversely veined. 
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