EDIBLE TUBERS, BULBS OR ROOTS 



Upon dry, elevated plains in and contiguous to the 

 Missouri River basin ranging from Saskatchewan 

 through Montana and the Dakotas southward to 

 Texas, you may find, where the plough has not ex- 

 terminated it, another famous wild food plant — the 

 Indian Bread-root of the American pioneers, known 

 to them also as Prairie Turnip and Prairie Potato, 

 and to the French Canadians as pomme de prairie 

 and pomme blanche. Botanically it is Psoralea escur- 

 lenta, Pursh, and its smaller cousin P. hypogaea, 

 Nutt. It is a rather low, rough-hairy herb, resinous- 

 dotted, with long-stalked leaves divided into five 

 fingers, and bearing dense spikes of small bluish 

 flowers like pea blossoms in shape. The tuberous 

 root, a couple of inches in length, resembles a minia- 

 ture sweet potato. Its nutritious properties were 

 well known to Indians and such whites of other days 

 as had any respect for the aboriginal dietary; and 

 Indian women found a regular sale for it among the 

 caravans of white traders, trappers and emigrants 

 that traveled the far western plains in pre-railroad 



Flowers yellow, both disk and rays, the latter numbering 12 to 

 20, and 1 to ly^ inches long. There is another species, H. 

 giganteus, L., one form of which growing in moist ground in western 

 Canada has thickened, tuber-like roots which are similarly edible. 

 These are the "Indian potato" of the Assiniboine Indians. Mr. 

 W. N. Clute, in "The American Botanist," February, 1918, noted 

 that the prairie species, Eelianthus laetiflorus, Pers., also bears 

 tubers, which are little inferior to those of H. tuberosus. 



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