Wild Hyacinth Seeds (Triteleia hyacinthina)

Another splendidly long-lived western wildflower with an edible bulb.

Also known as white brodiaea, and fool’s onion, this is a plant that can grow anywhere camas grows – preferring “wet winter/dry summer” locations from British Columbia to south into central California, and from western Nevada and Idaho to the Pacific Coast.

Like camas, this plant takes a number of years to flower when planted from seed, and when it does mature to a flowering age, the tall handsome clusters of blooms last mere days, before disappearing back under-ground (sometimes not appearing again for several years). The slender, cryptic leaves of plant similarly make only brief appearances.

All of this happens year-after-year, decade-after-decade, century-after-century in the very long lifespan of enigmatic plant. Over that timescale the plant slowly develops into a tennis ball-sized bulb (actually a corm), that may anchor itself more than a foot deep into heavy, mucky, clay soils.

Although slow to start from seed, as the corms mature, they produce offsets that can be divided to produce new plants.

This is a good rain garden plant, and a good species for soggy but sunny meadows. With care, this also a wildflower can survive to meet our descendants, many generations from now.  

0.5 grams (approximately 200 seeds)