Field Guide
A common sight throughout the U.S., one tiny outpost of this beautiful perennial occupies Canada’s southernmost point
Wild Hyacinth is a common sight throughout the U.S., but there’s only one tiny outpost of this beautiful perennial, at Canada’s southernmost point
Take everything you know about the hyacinth, that ubiquitous, perfumed and much-loved flower so common in our houses and gardens, and forget it for the moment. We are interested in a different hyacinth, a distant cousin that struggles to live in only one tiny remote place in Canada. Despite being listed as a threatened species, it is a tough survivor in an outpost far from where it thrives in the massive drainage basin of the mighty Mississippi. It is
and it is fascinating. While it looks different from what you might expect from the name, wild hyacinth does stand out: 50 to 70 centimetres in height, it features linear, keeled leaves on a tall stalk sparkling with dozens of star-shaped, sixpetalled pale blue (or white) flowers with bright yellow anthers. From a distance, a stand of them resembles an undulating violet pond. After more than a century of differing classifications and bickering-cum-debate, the showy perennial is now listed as part of the lily subclass and is a member of the asparagus family.
The plant’s familiar name comes from an elaborate Greek myth about Hyacinthus, a beautiful young Spartan prince who captured the fancy of both Apollo and Zephyrus, the god of the west wind. As the myth has it, in a fit of jealousy, Zephyrus blew a discus to strike and kill the mortal, rather than have him be with Apollo. A flower blossomed where his blood was spattered.
Of course, that doesn’t explain where it can be found in Canada. Unlike its close cousin the common Camassia quamash, which thrives throughout the West, this rare (for Canada) beauty is found in only five or six locations on several small islands and on shoreline near famed Point Pelee in western Lake Erie, including Canada’s southernmost point of land.
And it is in tough there. In the last 30 years, several locations have been wiped out, by development and in two cases by a massive increase in double-crested cormorants and Canada goose populations. Beginning in the 1980s, a gulp of cormorants (that is the collective noun!) numbering more than five thousand colonized the site, a blanket of their guano devastating the wild hyacinth’s habitat. On other islands, Canada geese goose-stepped all over them, eating what they didn’t trample (they give “browsing” a bad name). An anthropogenic effect initially (indirectly due to overfishing altering the lake bio-dynamics), the wild growth in the cormorant population was addressed through a series of annual culls that have reduced the bird’s numbers and restored some balance to the islands. Wild hyacinth grows there again, albeit in reduced numbers.
The plant is not good at reproducing, at least in Canada, with pitiable bulb offsetting (compared to those rooted in more conducive climes a few hundred kilometres to the south) and with limited capacity for seed dispersal. It depends heavily on pollinators such as bees and butterflies, so there’s another reason to worry about its continued survival. That being said, individual plants lead long lives, and because seedlings manage to germinate each spring at this extreme of its extent, beautiful meadows of soft violet ensue.
How did wild hyacinth get to this remote spot in the middle of a great lake, to this tiny environment conducive to its growth? It is hard to say, but cultivation by indigenous peoples thousands of years ago is the likeliest explanation. The bulbs of certain camas (the word is related to the quamash) are edible and a common seasonal starchy staple among many indigenous peoples further to the west where they are abundant. The bulbs are edible raw but benefit from lots of roasting, boiling or, in a traditional method, being buried beneath a firepit for days. Once cooked, they would be eaten whole or dried and pulverized into flour for many uses. The plentiful and palatable foodstuff (though it can cause gas) was adopted early on and valued by European arrivals.
A word of caution before thinking about eating some: avoid “death-camas.” These are five plants that resemble camas and grow in similar areas but are highly toxic to humans.