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Blue Camas Lily |
Curating your home landscape or garden connects you with a
tradition thousands of years old in which humans and plants share a special
relationship. Native Shoshone people living nomadic lifestyles began expanding
into the area now designated as Idaho as early as 4,000 years ago, and the
principle diets of these hunter-gatherers included many edible plants, not to
mention the many practical and symbolic uses of plant material. For thousands
of years (until contact with Westerners), the indigenous peoples lived off a
diet sourced by wild (unfarmed) plants. These wild native plants are still
around today, and are ecologically adapted to the Idaho climate and its diverse
plant hardiness zones.
Here is a sampling of plants gathered by Shoshone Native Americans
for sustenance:
Berries were ground and mixed along with hunted meats to
form nutritional patties, called pemmican, which were preserved chemically by
the acidic berries. Additionally, native tribes in Idaho such as the Nimi’ipuu
(Nez Perce) collected:
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Kouse |
Wild Carrot- Kouse
(also called “Biscuit Root” by non-native travelers)
- Sunflowers
- Huckleberries
- Wild Rhubarb
The list could continue, and the above links will give more
information about each type of plant. But which ones would grow well in your
garden? A good place to start collecting some tips is at the Idaho Native Plant
Society resource website. Specifically, the bulletin Landscaping
with Native Plants from the University of Idaho and the Landscaping
with Native Plants of the Intermountain Region from the BLM contain
detailed notes and descriptions of nearly all of the edible plants from the
above list. The guides include landscape uses and notes, regional
considerations, availability, and pollinator attractiveness. Additionally, the
two guides specify which of the plants are drought tolerant, how large they
grow, how much water and sunlight they need, when they flower, and what color
they bloom.
If there aren’t already enough reasons to focus your
landscaping efforts on native plants, the fact that these selected plants have
been used in antiquity up to the present because of their important nutritional
value to humans gives one more benefit to carefully designing your landscape
with location-appropriate plants. The provided references will get you started,
and remember also to keep learning along with archeologists and ethnobotanists
about how people and plants have survived by cooperating for thousands of years.