Courtesy USDA, Susan McDougall, Photographer
That stored plant food is also nutritious for humans. My good friend the ethnobotanist, Guy Banner, has been enticing me with knowledge about edible plants that are native in Utah. I always remember “Biscuit root” because it sounds, delicious. You can find biscuit root growing in almost any native plant communities and even in dry open rocky areas. There are several species that are edible. Biscuit roots are short leafy plants with yellow flowers arranged in an umbrella shape and a large tap root. The roots can be eaten raw or cooked, or dried and ground into a flour. Native Americans throughout the west also used biscuit root medicinally for a range of ailments.
Utah also has several species of wild onions that can be harvested and eaten. Wild onions have grassy leaves that die down and leave a small round ball of purplish flowers on top of a skinny stem. You’ll find them in dry gravelly sites. Two other plants with edible roots, which you may have heard of before, are the sego lily and cattails. The sego lily is our state flower and cattails are a very common sight in riparian areas. The bulb of sego lilies can be eaten, and the roots of cattails are so large, they come close to providing as much food as a potato. This might not sound supremely appetizing, but knowing how much food there can be in the wild may offer some comfort when you’re miles from the city on your next outdoor adventure.
For Wild About Utah this is Brittany Hunter.
Credits:
Photo: Courtesy & Copyright
Text: Brittany Hunter, Horticulturist, USU
Sources & Additional Reading