Anticlea elegans / mountain death camas

Adjectives: native, poisonous, riparian, rocky, toxic, wet meadows

Synonym: Zigadenus elegans
Also known as: elegant deathcamas
See also: meadow death camas

Mountain death camas is an attractive grass-like or lily-like plant although it is neither a grass nor a lily. The flowers are cream or greenish-white, somewhat bowl-shaped with two-pronged greenish-yellow nectar glands at the base of each of 6 tepals (it isn’t possible to distinguish between the sepals and the petals). The flowers occur in somewhat elongated terminal clusters and along the stalk of a raceme. This and the much earlier flower time of A. elegans are the easiest way to distinguish it from Toxicoscordion venenosum, the “meadow death camas”.

A. elegans grows in a wide variety of habitats, including wet(ter) meadows, open forests, stream banks, stony, calcareous soil of exposed slopes and ridges, but it is not all that common in any of them.

Perhaps the most important thing to know about this plant is… don’t eat it. All parts of the plant are extremely poisonous, especially the bulbs which can be confused (in the absence of flowers) with common camas (Camassia quamash) which was a staple for indigenous peoples, and with wild onions (which gave their indigenous name to Chicago).