Spring Lilies

Article © Andrew Scott
Images © Harry Hill

One ritual of spring in our household is an expedition to see wild lilies in bloom. There is something magical about these native plants, which flower so early in the season, so suddenly, and for such a brief period of time. Their exotic shapes and colours never fail to amaze me. It seems right that such delicate beauty should take a little effort to uncover. For us, a boat ride is required, to a cluster of islets off a point of land near our Sunshine Coast home. It is only there, on sunny, south-facing ledges, that the lilies seem to flourish. We usually kayak over. Often, it's the first paddle of the year.

While many members of the lily family grow in B.C., we see only three species on our offshore pilgrimage. The first is the chocolate lily, a fritillary, whose unusual floral bells are dark purple, mottled with chequered patterns of yellow, green and brown.

Then there's the common camas, with its brilliant blue, star-shaped petals. Both these plants were important food sources for First Nations people, and it seems ironic that the third lily we find here, growing right next to the others, is highly poisonous: meadow death-camas, its creamy-white blooms clustered at the top of a tall stem.

At one time, lilies were far more abundant in the region than they are today. Meriwether Lewis, who with his partner, William Clark, made one of the earliest explorations of western North America, had the good fortune to see camas meadows before the advent of agriculture and suburbs.

A June 12, 1806, entry in Lewis' journal reads: "The quawmash is now in blume and... at a short distance it resembles lakes of fine clear water, so complete in this deseption that on first sight I could have sworn it was water." (The word camas has many variant spellings.)

Beauty and frequent edibility seem to be the hallmarks of the lily family, Liliaceae, which is large and international. Onions, garlic, leeks and asparagus belong to it, as do tulips, hyacinths and hostas. At least thirty family members are native to the B.C. coast, including trillium, brodiaea, queen's cup, Indian hellebore and several types of wild onion.

Some of the showiest species, such as the yellow glacier and white avalanche lilies, as well as the more demure alp lily, prefer higher ground, as their names suggest. That still leaves plenty of springtime spectacle for the lower altitudes. There's the tiger lily, B.C.'s only "true" lily or member of the Lilium genus, with its extravagant orange, purple-dotted flowers. The delicate fawn or Easter lily comes in both pink and white forms. And the black lily, or northern rice root, which grows from Washington to Alaska, has striking bronze or purple-brown blossoms.

Many lily species were gathered for food by First Nations groups, but camas bulbs, in particular, were a dietary staple for Coast Salish and other tribes, and also an important trade item. The cultivation and tending of camas meadows were as close to agriculture as westcoast Aboriginal people got. Prime camas beds were the property of certain families and passed on through inheritance. Other fields were available for public harvest. Each season, the beds were weeded and cleared of stones and death-camas plants; brush was eliminated with a controlled annual burn.

Nancy Turner, a leading ethnobotanist and professor of environmental studies at the University of Victoria, has spent years studying how camas was harvested and prepared. Women, she says, usually dug the bulbs with hard, pointed sticks of yew or ocean spray (ironwood). Entire families would participate in the harvest, which took place in early summer, just before the flowers faded, and could last for weeks. The bulbs were at their biggest then, and the common camas could easily be distinguished from death-camas. The turf was cut and lifted out, then replaced after the larger bulbs had been plucked; small ones were left for next season. Some Coast Salish groups replanted the ripe seed capsules. It wasn't unusual for a tireless family to gather as much as 200 kilograms of camas annually.

Explorer and botanist David Douglas, who travelled through the Pacific Northwest in the 1820s and '30s, described in his journal how the plant was cooked. A fire was lit in a large pit lined with flat stones. When the stones were red hot, the ashes were removed and the stones covered with leaves, moss and seaweed. Large quantities of camas, up to fifty kilograms or more, were added, then more vegetation, then a layer of earth. A hole was made with a stick and water poured in, and the bulbs were left to steam and bake for up to thirty-six hours. "When warm," Douglas reported, "they taste much like a baked pear. . . . Assuredly they produce flatulence: when in the Indian hut I was almost blown out by strength of wind."

Camas bulbs consist mostly of inulin, a complex form of sugar; a lengthy baking process was necessary to reduce this indigestible carbohydrate to a more palatable form-fructose. The cooked bulbs were notably sweet. Most were consumed immediately, often at a ceremonial feast. Some were used for sweetening other foods or were pressed into biscuits or loaves and sun-dried for trade or storage. Black and chocolate lily bulbs contained a more starchy type of carbohydrate and were usually prepared by being boiled briefly in wooden or woven containers.

John Jewitt, an English sailor held captive by the Nuu-chah-nulth at Nootka Sound in the early 1800s, called camas "a very fine vegetable, being sweet, mealy, and of a most agreeable flavour." It was regarded by some groups almost as a confection. Not everyone agreed with Jewitt, however. An 1890 U.S. census document referred to the "sickening" taste of camas. "It is liked by Indians," the report went on, "and will fatten hogs, making very fine flavored meats, but it is not palatable to a white man." George Simpson of the Hudson's Bay Company called camas "a poor and nauseous food."

Camas ranges from southern B.C. to California and into eastern Washington, Oregon and Idaho. Wherever it grew, it was esteemed by Native people, and the camas trade extended as far as Montana, Alberta and the central B.C. coast. In northeastern Oregon, the plant even played a role in a bitter 1877 war between Chief Joseph of the Nez Percé and the U.S. government. White settlers ploughed up rich camas fields in the Wallowa Valley, and the destruction of this ancient resource was regarded by Joseph as an act of such wanton stupidity as to be beyond understanding or forgiveness.

By the 1930s, the aboriginal use of lily bulbs had all but disappeared. Various recipes for camas-mashed up in a thick soup, dressed with eulachon grease or whale oil, served with chunks of deer meat or salmon in a stew, boiled down to a rich brown syrup like molasses-are preserved in oral histories, but today, only the elderly can recall the aromatic, nutty flavour of the bulbs. "Oh, it was sweet," one Nitinaht woman told Nancy Turner in the early 1980s. "I still miss it."

The Garry oak meadows of southern Vancouver Island and the Gulf Islands are home to some incredibly productive camas grounds. In certain traditional digging areas, such as Victoria's Beacon Hill Park, the beds still contain as many as 200 plants per square metre. Researchers such as Brenda Beckwith, a doctoral student at the University of Victoria, now believe that these "meadow" landscapes are not natural at all but have resulted from centuries of cultivation and management by Native people. Historical reports compared the site of Fort Victoria to an English park, calling it "a work of art" and "a perfect Eden." Without the Coast Salish, says Beckwith, this "garden" might never have come into existence.

It would be difficult to revitalize the use of camas as a Native food. The Garry oak/camas meadows are in rapid decline today. Since the arrival of white settlers, foraging livestock have decimated many lily beds, and the open, prairie-like habitat is ideal for human developments of all types. The International Garry Oak Meadow Symposium and Community Festival, held in Victoria in May every few years, attempts to focus attention on the plight of this disappearing ecosystem, and the Garry Oak Meadows Preservation Society is trying to protect what's left of it.

These efforts are beginning to produce results: several important oak/camas habitats have been saved recently - at Maple Bay near Duncan, on South Winchelsea Island north of Nanaimo and on Russell Island south of Saltspring. At Mount Tolmie Park in Victoria, and at other sites, volunteers are working to rid lily meadows of broom, an invasive introduced shrub.

It's not surprising that a cult of dedicated fanciers and horticulturalists has grown up around lilies, including camas. Because of their scarcity, lily bulbs should never be removed from the wild (even indiscriminate tromping through the meadows can damage them). Some of the more spectacular species can be grown from seed, and many plant nurseries now carry native lilies. According to Richard Fraser, of Fraser's Thimble Farm on Saltspring Island, common camas and black and tiger lilies are the easiest to propagate. "From a commercial standpoint," says Fraser, "lilies are a very slow crop. We're looking at four to eight years before they bloom." A white variety of the blue camas is now available, as well.

B.C. lilies are popular ornamentals in Europe, courtesy of David Douglas, who introduced many species to England after his travels. Indeed, when the chefs at Vancouver Island's Sooke Harbour House got the idea of serving camas at their famed restaurant, they first had to order plants from Holland. Now they grow them in their own gardens. The bulbs are pressure-cooked and presented as a soup or a side vegetable. "People would be just as happy with mashed potatoes, believe it or not," says chef Brock Windsor. "But we make them eat the stuff and they seem to be quite pleased with it."

Former Western Living editor Andrew Scott has 25 years of experience as a journalist. He has worked for the Vancouver Sun and the Globe and Mail, published Alaska Airlines Magazine and written over 600 entries for the Encyclopedia of British Columbia. He writes a monthly column about the BC coast for the Georgia Straight and is author of two books - The Promise of Paradise: Utopian Communities in BC (1997) and Secret Coastline: Journeys and Discoveries along BC's Shores (2000). A third book, on BC artist/adventurer Stewart Marshall, is scheduled for Fall, 2003. Scott lives in Halfmoon Bay and edits the newsletter of the Sunshine Coast Conservation Association.