Companion plants for Camas summer dormancy?

Hi y'all,

I'm going to plant around 140 Atlantic Camas bulbs (Camassia scilloides) in a flatter area near a creek to try and start a sustained population. From what I understand, it'll occupy a spring ephemeral niche in a dappled sunlight area. Since camas will go dormant by the summer, does anyone have suggestions for companion plants that can occupy the space left behind when the camas goes dormant? It seems like there are options for ornamentals/pollinator plants, but I'd love to find a few different native plants with multiple functions. We're going to try a similar thing with Virginia Bluebells.

If anyone's ever done something like this with camas, I'd love to hear about your experience as well.

Thanks!
Drew

Blue Ridge/Piedmont VA, zone 7a/b.

Hi Drew, I'd be very interested in the answers to this too. Great question!
I've started a couple of perennial polyculture areas and Camassia is one of the plants that I have planted there - not native here of course, but we have a similar climate to coastal parts of the Pacific NW....
What I'm observing at the moment is my umbelliferas are making nice amounts of growth - angelica, hogweed, parsley. Being tap rooted they probably don't occupy the same niche root wise either as the camas. Sunroots are another possibility, but they are more upright with stoniferous roots that may be more competitive. Neither of these are likely, but may trigger more thoughts. I'm certainly going to try sowing/planting more umbelliferas, because the grass still has an upper hand in the areas and tend to swamp smaller stuff out.
I attach a photo from slightly earlier in the year - you can see the camas in bloom in the background and the sunroot and angelica emerging through the grass nearer to the camera.

Since camas are edible why not plant another edible that likes dappled sunlight areas like hostas?

Hostas are very pretty and come in many varieties:

https://permies.com/t/74610/perennial-vegetables/Favorite-Hosta-varieties

https://permies.com/t/32937/Edible-hostas#2319590

Perhaps Kentucky coffeetree? They are a native leguminous tree with large edible immature peas, that leafs out late in the spring. I haven’t tried them yet but have some growing. You may be able to find seeds from ornamental plantings in cities. And sun roots do seem like a good suggestion. They come out later in spring so give plenty of time for the camass to leaf out and soak in sunlight.

In your sunlight/water situation I’m guessing good edible companions could be Virginia waterleaf, Aniseroot (Osmorhiza spp.), wood and stinging nettles, hairy wood mint. Possibly goutweed if they’ve already taken over, but don’t plant that EVER. Your region is more biodiverse than mine so there are probably plenty of edible forest herbs I don’t know.

An odd idea. Maybe scattered rhubarb plants could grow well in that situation? They should like the moisture and fertility as well.

If there is more sunlight then warm season annuals could be good. Squash, tomato, corn, beans, etc…

These are all great ideas, thank you all! I'm going to steer away from planting more trees just because I don't want to have to restrategize opening up sunlight and such. Because it's in a pretty undisturbed creek area (I'm converting a relatively small part of a fern monoculture in an attempt to transition that area to more native plants) I want to avoid things like rhubarb or hostas, though I'm planning to try a second, more cultivated camas patch next year that these will thrive in.

Now that I'm thinking about it, I'm wondering if Sochan (Cutleaf Coneflower) might be a good fit, if I can get enough sun. I can harvest the spring greens, which will set it back a little in timing at least, and it won't compete with the Camas as much as it starts to fill out in the summer. Seems like the roots shouldn't compete too much. I'll have a second yield in the fall (according to Sam Thayer, I've only had the spring greens). Virginia waterleaf would fit great here, too--I'll need to do some research on how it grows. I've got a good bit of seed. I'm wondering, too, if a couple weeded areas of ground nut would be good, though I don't know how that performs as a ground cover. It's already growing there, just not thriving with the fern canopy.

Two other options I found are our native stinging nettle (Urtica gracilis), which could be an additional spring green to push back until the camas starts to fade, and then wood nettle (Laportea Canadensis), which, as I understand it, is a later spring/summer green. I think that one could be an alternative to the Sochan, if the camas bed covers differing shade levels.

Hi everyone,

Just some updates. We did a prescribed burn through an 18 acre woodland and this project has taken up most of my brain. There are a lot of cool questions there about how to manage a woodland with fire and for production.

Nonetheless, the camas bloomed this year by the creek, which was a treat in itself and worth the planting. One thought I have from this first year is that the question of succession is going to be solved by nature in any case, and the camas filled a spring ephemeral niche in the past late winter/early spring. It has since gone dormant and has been covered by ferns (dk what kind, my fern ID skills need work). As it stands, I'm thinking that pawpaw trees over a broader, better cultivated mat of camas is a good move for this spot, interspersed with other plants like wood nettle, false wood nettle, and sochan.

I kept some camas bulbs in pots for other options, and as I'm watching how and when it went dormant, I'm starting to think I'll make a bed next year with camas bulbs, and then seed it with annuals once these go dormant. This might work with the 'tilling' process of harvesting the bulbs and replanting them. Tomatoes (which will reseed, which might make less work for the whole thing), squash, peppers, maybe perennial potatoes? I'm a big okra fan, and this year I'm growing a relative for leafy greens (Abelmoschus manihot). That might work, too, or molokhia/celosia or some other summer greens.

In any case, trying to figure out how to upload photos. But the next updates will likely be (since the camas have gone dormant) seeing how this year impacts the camas population by the creek--will it grow or shrink?--and then experimenting with this successional bed. I'm thinking summer annuals are best, simply due to the disturbance of harvesting the bulbs (any ideas for summer harvesting perennials?), but selfseeding summer annuals like amaranths or tomatoes will be especially fun. I'll try and get some okra going that I can seed in the fall, see if I can get some seeds to survive winter.

Photos to come, I hope!

Here's some of the pictures of the camas, assuming this works for posting photos