Early Bloomer. Tight
clusters of few urn-shaped flowers on tall stalks,
6 blue to purple petals, edible bulbs.
Notes: Lily Family. (Formerly the Amaryllis family:
based on recent genetic studies, botanists have merged the entire
amaryllis family into the lily family. The Amaryllis family no
longer exits, although older books still list Blue Dicks as Amaryllis.)
The genera formerly considered to be in the amaryllis family certainly do
share numerous physical characteristics with the lily family. In all but
one genus, the Calochortus (the Globe Lily), many characteristics are
identical, or extremely similar.
Blue Dicks are frequent and showy blue-purple
Brodiaea-like flowers on grasslands and slopes.
You can recognize the characteristics that place Blue Dicks in the
Dichelostemma genus rather than the Brodiaea or Triteleia: the stems are
often weak and bent rather than stiff, the umbel is closely crowded rather
than loose, and there are conspicuous appendages on some of the anthers.
Other Dichelostemma (of which there are only members) have only 3
fertile stamens, the C. capitatum has 6-3 large, alternating with 3 small.
Capitatum means ‘head’ in
reference to the tight umbels. See
Twining Snake Lily.
Related to onions, the bulbs are edible. It is
one of the so-called “Indian Potatoes,” eaten raw, fried, boiled and
roasted. Some have a sweet,
nutty flavor. They
were sweeter when baked but were also eaten raw, and were one of the
most important food sources for the Maidu.
They dug the bulb, therefore, the nickname “Digger Indians.”
This name is as offensive as "Nigger" and should be avoided
except as part of our darker history.
Click on species name below to go to USDA for this species.
Kingdom Plantae -- Plants
Subkingdom Tracheobionta -- Vascular plants
Superdivision Spermatophyta -- Seed plants
Division Magnoliophyta -- Flowering plants
Class Liliopsida -- Monocotyledons
Subclass Liliidae
Order Liliales
Family Liliaceae -- Lily family
Genus Dichelostemma Kunth -- snakelily
Species Dichelostemma
capitatum (Benth.) Wood
-- bluedicks
Contains 2 Subspecies and 2 accepted taxa overall
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