It looks like it grows like a weed at Wheaton labs, so I guess it must be a native plant there. It looks so pretty and happy in the shade of the trees.
The flowers looks like a miniature sunflower, but far too early for most in the sunflower family as it is flowering in early May. It is also all yellow. It is so early I wonder even if it is a bulb. I can't see the leaves very well which would give more of a clue.
If it likes Missoula, it probably won't like Skye, but is a tough little beauty all the same!
Could it be spring sunflower, arrowleaf balsamroot (Balsamorhiza sagittata), an important food & medicine plant for Indigenous Peoples of the Pacific Northish West of Turtle Island?
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Ac Baker wrote:Could it be spring sunflower, arrowleaf balsamroot (Balsamorhiza sagittata), an important food & medicine plant for Indigenous Peoples of the Pacific Northish West of Turtle Island?
It looks like it grows like a weed at Wheaton labs, so I guess it must be a native plant there. It looks so pretty and happy in the shade of the trees.
The flowers looks like a miniature sunflower, but far too early for most in the sunflower family as it is flowering in early May. It is also all yellow. It is so early I wonder even if it is a bulb. I can't see the leaves very well which would give more of a clue.
If it likes Missoula, it probably won't like Skye, but is a tough little beauty all the same!
I think Stephen called it an arrow leaf sun flower.
Digging out some large roots soon for experimental things.
Jared, have a look at our "Native Plants of Montana" poster in the kitchen, and you'll see its spitting image on there.
A question of my own: has anyone tried eating the root? I've read and heard that it's edible, and the ones we've dug up on occasion have an impressive root mass that's just begging to be sampled.
"We carry a new world here, in our hearts..."
Nancy Reading
steward and tree herder
Posts: 9478
Location: Isle of Skye, Scotland. Nearly 70 inches rain a year
I caught them at the perfect moment, in the best year in a long time. I picked entire heads just after the flower petals dropped, and they started to dry down. I caught them before birds and winds took away the seeds. Then i spread them a single layer deep on a cloth, to allow them to dry quickly so they don't mold.
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