Quamash Research Articles

Common camas (Camassia quamash) response across an urban–rural gradient in coastal oak meadows in Greater Victoria, Canada

Common camas (Camassia quamash) response across an urban–rural gradient in coastal oak meadows in Greater Victoria, Canada

Strengthening Relationships to Traditional Foodways: Adapting Food Practices Through Camas Cultivation Experiments on the Fort Hall Indian Reservation

Contemporary efforts to strengthen Indigenous food sovereignty can take many forms, some of which may depart from traditional food gathering practices. Common camas ( Camassia quamash) is a wild-gathered geophyte that served as a staple food for Indigenous Peoples prior to colonialism. Because the abundance of camas has declined and gathering areas are difficult to access, this project sought to increase Shoshone-Bannock Tribal citizen access to camas by experimenting with ways to grow camas locally. We also held events that provided an opportunity for Tribal citizens to interact with camas. Strengthening relationships with camas in these ways not only can enhance the health of Indigenous communities because of camas’ nutritional value, but also because renewing practices and values associated with camas brings Indigenous Peoples together to redefine and assert their nationhood. Our team of authors includes Tribal- and university-affiliated professionals and students who worked collaboratively to develop this project. We evaluated how different growing conditions and seed sources influence camas cultivation. We found that soil type, stratification setting, and seed source significantly affected seed percent germination. While cold-moist stratifying seeds in a controlled setting in potting soil generally led to the highest percent germination, soil type interacted with seed source, suggesting some degree of local adaptation across gathering areas. Transplanted bulbs had high survival rates, suggesting both seeds and bulbs as viable options to increase local access to camas. This project contributes to our understanding of camas ecology while also demonstrating one approach to help strengthen traditional foodways through Tribal-university partnerships.

Honey bee introductions displace native bees and decrease pollination of a native wildflower.

Introduced species can have cascading effects on ecological communities, but indirect effects of species introductions are rarely the focus of ecological studies. For example, managed honey bees (Apis mellifera) have been widely introduced outside their native range and are increasingly dominant floral visitors. Multiple studies have documented how honey bees impact native bee communities through floral resource competition, but few have quantified how these competitive interactions indirectly affect pollination and plant reproduction. Such indirect effects are hard to detect because honey bees are themselves pollinators and may directly impact pollination through their own floral visits. The potentially huge but poorly understood impacts that non-native honey bees have on native plant populations combined with increased pressure from beekeepers to place hives in U.S. National Parks and Forests makes exploring impacts of honey bee introductions on native plant pollination of pressing concern. In this study, we used experimental hive additions, field observations, as well as single-visit and multiple-visit pollination effectiveness trials across multiple years to untangle the direct and indirect impacts of increasing honey bee abundance on the pollination of an ecologically important wildflower, Camassia quamash. We found compelling evidence that honey bee introductions indirectly decrease pollination by reducing nectar and pollen availability and competitively excluding visits from more effective native bees. In contrast, the direct impact of honey bee visits on pollination was negligible, and, if anything, negative. Honey bees were ineffective pollinators, and increasing visit quantity could not compensate for inferior visit quality. Indeed, although the effect was not statistically significant, increased honey bee visits had a marginally negative impact on seed production. Thus, honey bee introductions may erode longstanding plant-pollinator mutualisms, with negative consequences for plant reproduction. Our study calls for a more thorough understanding of the indirect effects of species introductions and more careful coordination of hive placements.

Connecting people, plants and place: A native plant society's journey towards a community of practice

Abstract Native plants are often promoted for gardening, biodiversity conservation and ecological restoration. Native plant gardening can contribute to environmental sustainability by conserving water and creating biologically diverse habitat. Despite the many virtues of native plants, there are challenges to building relationships between people and plants, including limited plant availability and low level of general plant appreciation and literacy. Activities that foster people–plant connections can help to alleviate Plant Awareness Disparity, foster plant conservation and produce more native plants. We describe how our environmental non‐profit organization, the Kootenay Native Plant Society, has worked to encourage people–plant connections in the West Kootenay region of British Columbia, Canada, over a 10‐year period. We borrowed from different disciplines, practices and theories to inform our work—from organic gardening and ecological restoration to sustainable development. Our programmes developed from outreach and educational activities to more place‐based and interactive initiatives. Initial activities, including wildflower walks and school programmes, offered plant information but more meaningful plant engagement was needed. We provided deeper knowledge through a flagship species approach showcasing a native plant, camas Camassia quamash, itxwa, resulting in greater appreciation for camas, although this strategy rarely translated to broader plant conservation by residents. We developed more specialized programmes that trained participants in native plant propagation and gardening, where they gained competence and contributed to a social group linked by community‐based conservation efforts and a passion for native plants. We learned our journey to connect more people with native species and get plants into gardens was a pathway towards a community of practice. Building lasting people–plant connections is not straightforward; it is an adaptive integrative process requiring delivery of dynamic and complementary activities developed over time from cumulative insights and organizational reflection. What we thought was simply an unavailability of native plants paired with people's lack of native plant appreciation was more complex, requiring a shift in social understanding of people's relationships with plants. The cultivation of a community of practice is an act of socio‐ecological restoration, a shared pathway that supports a self‐sustaining community practicing good stewardship and empowered to grow native plants. Read the free Plain Language Summary for this article on the Journal blog.

Forb composition gradients and intra-annual variation in a threatened Pacific Northwest Bunchgrass Prairie.

Grasslands are among the most threatened and least protected terrestrial biome. Grassland forbs: (1) account for most of the floral diversity; (2) are not well studied because they have been overshadowed by grass‐centered research; and (3) have been a major source for biodiversity loss. The Pacific Northwest Bunchgrass Prairie (PNB) of North America is one of the most endangered grasslands on earth. Knowledge of vegetation community dynamics in the PNB is based primarily on bunchgrasses. There is a paucity of information related to the PNB's diverse native perennial forbs (hereafter “forbs”). Consequently, PNB forb community patterns and dynamics are largely unknown. We describe forb community structure and its relationship to environmental factors and phenology. We sampled 29 plots in the Starkey Experimental Forest and Range, northeastern Oregon, at three different times during 2016 (April; May; July). Nonmetric multidimensional scaling (NMS) indicated that the dominant gradient in forb composition was related (R 2 = 0.66) to slope and soil P and K, contrasting flat, poorly drained soils (scabflats) at one end with steep, well‐drained soils at the other end. The secondary gradient (R 2 = 0.16) contrasted deeper, finer textured soils at one end with shallow, rocky soils at the other. Forb richness decreased by ~40% from April to July. NMS and Indicator Species Analysis (ISA) showed that most forbs had affinities toward spring. Ubiquitous forbs (e.g., Triteleia grandiflora, Camassia quamash) were sparse to absent by July. Contradictory to general descriptions of the PNB, forb cover and richness in drought‐prone sites were comparable to mesic sites when spring data were considered. Our findings suggest that PNB grasslands contain diverse forb communities that are structured primarily by water drainage and soil depth. Conventional sampling concomitant with peak grass biomass is insufficient to characterize PNB forb communities, particularly for scabflats and the most drought‐prone soils.

Effects of traditional harvest and burning on common camas (Camassia quamash) abundance in Northern Idaho: The potential for traditional resource management in a protected area wetland.

The bulbs of common camas (Camassia quamash) were a staple food of Indigenous Peoples of western North America for millennia. Camas harvesting site productivity was encouraged through intense management. Common camas is considered a facultative wetland species, and populations have declined due to contemporary wetland drainage and land conversion. Conservation of existing habitat, as well as restoration of degraded systems, is necessary. Traditional ecological knowledge (TEK) and resource management (TRM) are often promoted as viable modes of contemporary resource management but are rarely tested or implemented. We designed a controlled experiment, informed by a born‐in‐the‐tradition specialist, to evaluate the response of common camas populations to traditional bulb harvest, burning, and a combination of harvest and burning. We recorded camas plant counts of three life stage classes of camas plants (single‐leaf seedling, multiple‐leaf adult, and flowering adult) over the course of 6 years in arrays of plots and subjected to treatments or left undisturbed as control. Harvesting removed plants (>800 bulbs) and reduced aboveground counts of camas densities (X¯ ~ 50% of control, p < .05). Burning contributed to a reduction in single‐leaf plants but had an overall positive effect (X¯ ~ 150% of control, p < .05) on adult camas and flowering plant abundance, and ameliorated the digging impacts. Treatment impacts tapered over the course of the study, and results indicate that a sustainable harvesting return interval of approximately 5 years may be possible when combined with fire to reduce litter and competition from pasture grasses and to accelerate the recovery of camas. Our findings support the hypotheses proposed by traditional knowledge specialists and ethnobotanists that digging and burning reduce intra‐ and interspecific competition and stimulate the growth of unharvested adult plants. More generally, our study supports the integration of traditional ecological knowledge into the evidence base available for protected area wetland prairie management.

Harvesting strategies as evidence for 4000 years of camas (Camassia quamash) management in the North American Columbia Plateau.

One of the greatest archaeological enigmas is in understanding the role of decision-making, intentionality and interventions in plant life cycles by foraging peoples in transitions to and from low-level food production practices. We bring together archaeological, palaeoclimatological and botanical data to explore relationships over the past 4000 years between people and camas (Camassia quamash), a perennial geophyte with an edible bulb common across the North American Pacific Northwest. In this region throughout the late Holocene, people began experimenting with selective harvesting practices through targeting sexually mature bulbs by 3500 cal BP, with bulb harvesting practices akin to ethnographic descriptions firmly established by 1000 cal BP. While we find no evidence that such interventions lead to a selection for larger bulbs or a reduction in time to maturity, archaeological bulbs do exhibit several other domestication syndrome traits. This establishes considerable continuity to human intervention into camas life cycles, but these dynamic relationships did not result in unequivocal morphological indications of domestication. This approach to tracking forager plant management practices offers an alternative explanatory framework to conventional management studies, supplements oral histories of Indigenous traditional resource management and can be applied to other vegetatively propagated species.

Creation of a Field Guide to Camas Prairie Plants with Undergraduates: Project-Based Learning Combined with Epistemological Decolonization

Remnant camas prairies and associated oak woodlands are the focus of contemporary Indigenous food sovereignty efforts in the Salish Sea (aka Puget Sound) region of western Washington. They are also the focus of research and restoration to conserve at-risk species of animals and plants protected under the United States Endangered Species Act. Currently there is little collaboration between tribes and restoration scientists. These conditions create an opportunity and ethical imperative for developing undergraduate curriculum that highlights the connections between biodiversity conservation and traditional Indigenous ecological knowledge. Patchy mosaic prairie-oak woodland vegetation visibly reflects the imprint of human activity, which includes past burning to foster native food plants including common camas (Camassia quamash) and Oregon white oak (Quercus garryana). Using a floristic research project focused on these cultural landscapes as a case study, this essay illustrates how interdisciplinary inquiry and service learning can enrich college-level plant taxonomy curriculum, while creating rich opportunities for students to link their botanical studies to a historically-grounded understanding of why the conservation challenges exist in the first place. Through this collaborative, multi-year research effort, students contribute to the production of needed resources useful to regional conservation efforts. Affiliated learning communities also consider what it might mean to decolonize botanical knowledge in the context of ecological restoration.

Bannock (Fort Hall, Idaho)

Bannock (Fort Hall, Idaho)

Visiting insect behaviour and pollen transport for a generalist oak-savannah wildflower,Camassia quamash(Asparagaceae)

AbstractMany studies have investigated plant-pollinator interactions using visit records of insects contacting floral reproductive organs. However, these studies may not reflect the effectiveness of visits, since factors such as visitor behaviour and the composition of pollen on their bodies may influence conspecific pollen transfer required for fertilisation in plants. Here we study how pollen transport to a generalist wildflower,Camassia quamash(Pursh) Greene (Asparagaceae), is influenced by the behaviour and body pollen of five functional visitor groups (AndrenaFabricius (Hymenoptera: Andrenidae)/Halictidae (Hymenoptera),Apis melliferaLinnaeus (Hymenoptera: Apidae), BombusLatreille (Hymenoptera: Apidae),OsmiaPanzer (Hymenoptera: Megachilidae), and Syrphidae (Diptera). We found that functional visitor groups differed in their behaviour (BombusandOsmiawere legitimate visitors, contacting both anthers and stigmas) and in the amount of conspecific pollen on their bodies (A. melliferahad the highest levels andAndrena/Halictidae the lowest). Conspecific pollen receipt byC. quamashstigmas was high (&gt;80%), and best explained by visitor behaviour rather than the proportion of visitors with high amounts of conspecific body pollen. Our findings highlight the utility of pollen analyses for understanding pollinator effectiveness.

Off-Target Impacts of Graminoid-Specific Herbicide on Common Camas (Camassia quamash) Growth, Abundance, Reproduction, and Palatability to Herbivores

Invasive grass removal with herbicide is an important component of the restoration process in many prairie and grassland ecosystems. Management of invasive grasses in areas with high concentrations of native plants necessitates investigation of off-target herbicide effects on sensitive native species. Two graminoid-specific herbicides, Fusilade (active ingredient fluazifop-P-butyl) and Envoy Plus (active ingredient clethodim), are frequently used to control invading broadleaf pasture grasses in Pacific Northwest prairies with little knowledge of how these chemicals impact native plants. One such native plant, common camas (Camassia quamash), is a characteristic forb of these prairies that often grows in areas treated with these herbicides. Because camas is a critical resource for native pollinators and holds ethnoecological significance to native peoples, it is important that management methods do not negatively impact this plant. The objective of this study was to understand if and how various seasonal applications of clethodim and fluazifop may impact camas. We implemented a factorial design testing the effects of herbicide type (fluazifop, clethodim, control) and application season-frequency (combinations of mid-spring, late-spring, fall) on camas growth, foliar cover, reproduction, and palatability to herbivores. Our results show that herbicide treatments may reduce leaf length and increase flower and seed production, but do not influence seed viability or palatability to herbivores. The observed effects are not likely to be ecologically detrimental, suggesting that repeat applications of either fluazifop or clethodim can be safely used in areas with high concentrations of this iconic prairie species.

An Evaluation of Plant Selections and Irrigation Requirements for Extensive Green Roofs in the Pacific Northwestern United States

Extensive green roofs are a challenging environment for most plants, and this has typically limited the available plant palette. However, some functional goals for green roofs such as wildlife habitat require a broader spectrum of plant species from which to choose. In addition, pronounced seasonality in rainfall is a common climatic trait throughout much of the world; yet, few studies have evaluated green roof plant selections or the need for supplemental irrigation in a seasonally dry climate. In a field trial conducted in the Pacific northwestern United States, we evaluated the performance of eight taxa during establishment and under three different water management regimes post establishment: 1) non-irrigated; 2) irrigation based on green roof–specific water conservation guidelines for Portland, OR; or 3) the minimum irrigation required to maintain good plant condition. Plants were regionally available and represented a range of growth forms (succulents, shrubs, grasses, bulbs, and rhizomes) and potential functional attributes (habitat quality, aesthetic quality, and stormwater management proficiency). All eight species had generally high survival over the establishment year, although hardy iceplant (Delosperma cooperi) and common woolly sunflower (Eriophyllum lanatum var. lanatum) experienced some overwinter mortality. Species differed in the timing and absolute amount of growth during establishment. However, when the strong effect of initial size on growth was taken into account using analysis of covariance, there were no remaining differences between species in the relative magnitude of growth during establishment. During the summer following establishment, irrigation regime had significant effects on survival and growth, but these varied across taxa. Irrigation had no effect on survival or growth of the succulents hardy iceplant and ‘Cape Blanco’ broadleaf stonecrop (Sedum spathulifolium) and the bulb small camas (Camassia quamash). For the other taxa, plant survival and growth generally decreased with decreasing irrigation and many species did not survive at all without irrigation. Several species, particularly the grass roemer's fescue (Festuca idahoensis var. roemeri) and the shrub ‘Lasithi’ cretan rockrose (Cistus creticus ssp. creticus) suffered aesthetically under low irrigation, partly reflecting adaptive responses to drought stress. Weed pressure was high on bare substrate and was enhanced by irrigation, but weed pressure was negligible following canopy closure across all water regimes. These results suggest that succulents, bulbs, and rhizotomous forbs have potential for use on extensive green roofs in seasonally dry climates even without supplemental irrigation. Designing extensive roofs composed of more diverse growth forms will likely require some amount of supplemental irrigation. This study highlights the need to design context-specific green roofs that match appropriate plant selections with explicit functional goals and management plans. This will improve function and reduce the overall costs associated with maintenance.

Phylogeography of Camassia quamash in western North America: postglacial colonization and transport by indigenous peoples

Recent human activities have spread numerous plant species across the globe, yet it is unclear to what degree historical human activities influenced plant dispersal. In western North America, Camassia quamash was one of the most important food plants for indigenous peoples, who transported its propagules either intentionally or accidentally. We investigated how human and natural dispersal might have contributed to the current pattern of spatial genetic structure in C. quamash by performing phylogeographical surveys at two geographical scales. We sequenced two noncoding regions of chloroplast deoxyribonucleic acid (DNA) in 226 individuals from 53 populations of C. quamash as well as 126 individuals from 21 populations of the non-food plant Zigadenus venenosus. Contrary to the expectation of anthropogenic transport, C. quamash populations did not exhibit weaker genetic structure than Z. venenosus populations. We also failed to find convincing evidence for signatures of transport. Instead, our data showed strong effects of past glaciation and geographical barriers of the mountains in the Cascade Range, Olympic Peninsula and Vancouver Island. West of the Cascades, the species appears to have largely migrated northward from a southern refugium after deglaciation, whereas few populations having a highly divergent haplotype might have survived in southwestern Washington. Our data suggest that despite substantial ethnobotanical evidence for anthropogenic transport, the current pattern of genetic structure of C. quamash does not show any detectable signatures of transport by indigenous peoples and is better understood as the result of natural dispersal processes.

Insect Visitation to Wildflowers in the Endangered Garry Oak, &lt;em&gt;Quercus garryana&lt;/em&gt;, Ecosystem of British Columbia

The Garry Oak Ecosystem (GOE) is a fragmented and endangered ecosystem in Canada, and is currently the focus of conservation and restoration efforts in British Columbia. However, little is known about the basic biology of GOE forbs, or their relationships with pollinating insects. We monitored wildflowers and their insect visitors in 25 quadrats within a 25 × 25 metre plot, located in a fragment of the GOE near Duncan, British Columbia, for six weeks (the majority of the flowering period). Overall, 21 native and non-native forb species flowered in our quadrats during the survey, and we observed an additional six forb species flowering outside of our quadrats. Eight forbs were visited within quadrats by a total of 13 insect taxa, identified to morphospecies. Visits by eight additional morphospecies were observed outside of the quadrats. In general, visitation was low; however, most insect morphospecies were observed visiting more than one plant species, and most plant species were visited by more than one insect morphospecies, suggesting that pollination may be generalised in this community. A Chi-squared analysis indicated that insect visitation was not proportional to the relative abundance of forbs, with higher than expected visitation to Common camas (Camassia quamash), and no observed visits to 11 species, most with very small (putatively unattractive) flowers. The most frequent insect visitor was the introduced Honeybee, Apis mellifera, followed by native mason bees (Osmia spp.) and mining bees (Andrena spp.). Our observations provide baseline data for future, detailed studies that should investigate the importance of plant-pollinator mutualisms for sustainability of populations and communities in this rare ecosystem.

Camas (Camassiaspp.) and riceroot (Fritillariaspp.): Two liliaceous “root” foods of the Northwest Coast Indians

Two species of camas (Camassia quamash [Pursh] Greene and C. leichtlinii: [Baker] S. Wats) and two species of riceroot (Fritillaria camschatcensis [L.] Ker‐Gawl. and F. lanceloata Pursh) were important root foods for the Indians of the Northwest Coast of North America. Camas and the latter species of riceroot were used predominantly in the southern part of the region, whereas F. camaschatcensis was used as far north as Alaska, as well as on the Aleutian Islands and the Kamchatka Peninsula. The bulbs of camas were an article of trade, and their harvesting and cooking were often large‐scale communal enterprises. Nutritional analyses show that these species would have provided meaningful quantities of fiber, nitrogen, trace elements and energy, if thoroughly cooked.

The Blue Camas, Camassia quamash, a plant new to Waterton Lakes National Park, Alberta

The Blue Camas, Camassia quamash, a plant new to Waterton Lakes National Park, Alberta