|
click on image for detail view |
Great Camas
Camassia
leichtlinii--click on image for detail
view
Family: Liliaceae
Original:
PRIVATE COLLECTION
Prints--Offset,
Edition 1000, 11 by 14 inches
Cards--5
by 7 inches, on watercolor paper with a deckled edge
|
Great Camas (Camassia leichtlinii)
Liliaceae Family
Camas is found in coastal to montane wet meadows
and swales, and occurs east from northern California into Wyoming
and Utah. The plants often grow to be over two feet tall, with
numerous pale blue to deep royal blue flowers about one and
a half inches in diameter. Look closely at the flowers to see
gorgeous striping of different hues of blues. Bulbs of many
species of camas were a staple food of Native Americans, who
wisely avoided the bulbs of the appropriately named death camas
(Zygadenus venenosus), which frequently grows intermixed
with camas. Camas is in cultivation in both white- and blue-flowered
forms, but native camas stands are becoming less and less common,
as lands they once dominated are taken over for grazing or crops.
Wild camas is still common along Interstate-5 in Oregon, where
the deep blue-flowered form can be seen in the Willamette Valley,
the white-flowered forms grow just north of Roseburg, and the
intermediate, pale blue-flowered form occurs in the regions
between. |
|