Lomatium grayi
Milfoil Lomatium

Family: Apiaceae [Umbelliferae] (Carrot family)

Photo taken near Bear Creek Summit, east of Weiser, Washington Co, Idaho; growing in shallow soils in basalt cracks, dry ridgetop

Flowers:

scapes ascending; yellow petals and anthers; bracts of involucel very narrow, 3 to 7 mm long, less than 0.5 mm wide

Fruit:

6 to 15 mm long, wings 2 to 10 mm wide

Leaves:

very finely ternate-pinnately dissected with several hundered to more than 1,000 ultimate segments, up to 6 mm long and about 0.5 mm wide, the segments disposed on many planes giving the leaf thickness

Plant:

acaulescent; several to many stems growing from a branched caudex; 12 to 50 cm tall. The roots were eaten by the Yakama and Paiute. Young stems were also eaten raw.

Habitat:

dry, open, often rocky places from lowlands to middle elevations in the mountains

Distribution of species:

widespread east Cascades, central Washington to Idaho, south in eastern Oregon and western Idaho to Nevada, sporadic populations to southeast Idaho, Wyoming, and Colorado and Utah

Distribution of genus:

more or less 75 species: central and western North America

More information about this plant:

Flora Northwest